


Metal

by MayumiSato



Series: Omegaverse Jewels: A series of different stories with different combinations of omegaverse [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Omega Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-01-16 02:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12333636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayumiSato/pseuds/MayumiSato
Summary: Nerd alpha Alfred meets punk omega Arthur and they slowly but surely start to develop a bond.





	1. Strangers

Puberty was often the time at which many children realized what a difference it made whether they were alphas, betas or omegas. Before a certain age, types were just something parents told kids they had but not something that had an impact on their lives. Generally speaking, except for little differences in the way they felt at room temperature, kids from every type had a very similar childhood, even though adults tried to shape them to consider themselves different from each other.

That similarity changed when hormones start to kick in during puberty. Suddenly, some of them would start producing scents and become more sensitive to other people’s scents. Alphas grew taller and stronger and omegas gained some curves in their bodies. Even betas were affected by this, depending on their biological sex (another thing that didn’t make much difference for children).

With all those physical changes, there were also behavior changes. Alphas, becoming very aware of the muscles they had acquired, would start thinking very highly of themselves and keep fighting with each other to see who was stronger. Omegas, on the other hand, tended to become more aware of the social image projected upon them and would try to avoid activities that would make them look like brutes. Betas escaped some of these social pressures, sure, but usually they felt really out of place because they were the only ones excluded from all that thing about scents, heats and mates that the media said was the best thing ever.

Now, where was teenage Alfred in the middle of all this?

Nowhere, actually.

Alfred was an alpha, as blood tests could and _had_ to prove at certain times. Still, everyone usually perceived him as a beta because he looked and acted nothing like a typical alpha.

With puberty he stretched a lot but didn’t gain the muscles to make up for it, so he looked more like an awkward marionette than an iron giant. In addition to his already lame look, he had had to start wearing glasses and braces from the age of thirteen, which wouldn’t be so bad in a cool, confident alpha who could pull it off. However, mixed with his clumsy ways, all this only made him look even more like a huge nerd.

At sixteen, Alfred had no interest in sports and although sex seemed very, _very_ interesting, getting it wasn’t a priority in his life. His passions were comics, archeology and documentaries about aliens. He founded an astronomy club early in high school and now spent much of his free time building balloons that he tried to make reach space or trying to get a telescope to watch certain space phenomena.

Everyone who saw Alfred walking happily with his books and comics, without even paying attention to the omegas around him, thought he was a beta. He didn’t have a strong smell, a strong presence and neither a strong body. Also, coincidentally or not, he had surrounded himself with betas friends who really didn’t seem that different from him, besides being way shorter.

That didn’t really matter though since Alfred had more to do than to changing his personality just to suit what society expected of his type.

He had other priorities, such as asking the principal to hold a club event on the school’s roof during Spring so it wouldn’t be too hot or too cold to stay the night in the open.

This was something he actually did in April of that same year, which probably marked the beginning of a change in his previously uneventful love life.

* * *

 

April 12, 2016.

Alfred F. Jones, a junior, asked for permission to use the school’s roof for a club event, arguing that it was the safest environment for a bunch of teenagers to be alone in the middle of the night. The principal agreed, probably knowing that a bunch of nerds looking at stars wouldn’t do any serious damage to school propriety.

Just like that, Alfred was given permission to do the event on that same week and was told to get the roof key in the staff room. No one other than the janitor, who went there once or twice a week, was supposed to be up there, still the principal recommended that Alfred went there a couple of times before the event to decorate the area and check if everything was okay because sometimes “a bunch of punks went there without permission and picked the goddamn lock”.

Listening to his advice, at four o'clock in the afternoon of that same day, Alfred went up to the top floor and found out that, oddly enough, the roof access door was already open.

His first thought at seeing that was, "Ah, dang, the janitor must be cleaning now" but in a second thought, it couldn’t be that. He came across the janitor a couple of minutes earlier, cleaning up the mess that some student who had mixed soda and mentos had done on the stairs in the second floor.

Now, he was confused. Wanting to check if everything was okay, Alfred slowly opened the door and peeked inside.

He was hit with a strong, bitter smell of cigarettes that made him grimace in disgust. Ugh. What the hell, man.

He had to cover his nose with his arm to suppress that terrible smell. Being an alpha, he had a sensitive nose. For that same reason, he could guess that it wasn’t another alpha smoking there. It was probably a beta, since betas could be jerks at times.

Alfred stepped up, pushing the door against the wall with all he had, hoping that the noise would be enough to make whoever was there to piss off. Alfred couldn’t win a fight for the life of him after all.

He did get a reaction from it, though it was much calmer and just mildly annoyed in comparison to what he had expected. He heard a voice right behind him saying,

"Oi, what's wrong with you? Don’t open the fucking door like that. You want the entire bloody school to know we're here?”

When Alfred turned to see its source, he saw a guy with his back against the wall, standing right beside the door.

The guy was a punk. Like, a literal punk. Not just a jerk as Alfred assumed the principal meant when he told him that punks liked to hang around the roof. He had the whole set. Black clothes, piercings and green strands of hair. His jeans were so tight Alfred could see pretty much everything he had there… Not that he was paying much attention to it.

Anyway, punk guy was leaning against the wall next to the door, smoking a cigarette and looking completely unconcerned at being caught doing it.

The complete calm, control, and security within those intense green eyes intimidated Alfred, who had to swallow hard before questioning him.

"How did you get in here? Did they gave you the key?”

Though Alfred doubted it, he didn’t want to assume. You know what they say about assuming.

At hearing his question, the stranger blinked twice, seemed at lost of words for a moment. Then, he began to laugh right at his face.

"Oh, that explains what a straight-laced fella such as yourself is doing here. They gave you the key, then. I should have suspected as much.” the smoker continued to laugh, amused. Hearing him again, Alfred noticed that he had a British accent, although he didn’t know how to differentiate British accents enough to point out exactly where he was from.

"Are you a transfer student?" Alfred asked, frowning reprovingly, which should not be too intimidating, given that he was also hugging his body tightly, as if he was trying to protect himself. "I don’t know how things work in your country but you shouldn’t be smoking at school..." he added hesitantly. That guy looked like he could drop him on the floor in one punch.

Smoker dude, in turn, gave Alfred a rather amused smile.

"Come on, lad. No one would even know I'm smoking if you had not come here. Instead of complaining so much, shouldn’t you appreciate the fact that I've isolated myself to smoke instead of simply sharing toxic smoke with innocent students?”

No? What kind of argument was that? He might not be doing something awful but it wasn’t like he was a misunderstood hero either!

Despite feeling nervous about how to deal with that guy, Alfred’s sincerity always came out automatically when he was under pressure. It was both a blessing and a curse.

“Er... Not really. You would have been suspended if they saw you right now so… Yeah, I don’t think you’re doing this just out the goodness of your heart, man.” Alfred answered in genuine disbelief at what that guy was saying and doing. That was the most self-confident beta he had ever encountered.

“Oh no. It seems I got caught.” the beta mocked, placing a hand on his chest melodramatically “What now? What are you going to do to me, Mr. Alpha?”

It was so freaking weird to be called an alpha. People barely realized that Alfred was an alpha. Let alone to call him by his type as if that was his name.

"Nothing. To be honest, that's none of my business, really…" Alfred admitted, rubbing the back of his neck and lowering his eyes. "Can you just stop coming here for a while? My astronomy club is going to organize an event here and it would be a bummer if we had to clean up a bunch of cigarette butts.”

"A reasonable request, I must say…" the stranger said, and Alfred was about to sigh, relieved that the situation had been solved, when suddenly the other guy approached him, grabbing him by the  collar and pulling him close with a provocative smile. "... but what if I don’t want to listen to it?"

Wait a second. Was that bullying? Was Alfred really being bullied right now?

Well, all things considered, that took a long time to happen.

Oh, dang. He had to act quick. Where were his alpha instincts when he needed it (or at any other time, really)?

"Well... If you don’t wanna stop coming here…" Alfred began to say cautiously. "… I can leave a plastic bag and a broom here … so you can clean things up when you're done.”

A long silence followed that line. Smoker dude stared at him for a long time with an expression of "Seriously, man?" which was almost humiliating.

Fortunately, after this uncomfortable pause, he finally let Alfred go, taking a deep breath and, surprisingly, showing him a discreet smile.

"You're such a weird alpha, you know that? I was sort of expecting you to challenge me to a fight or try to put me in my place as an omega or something stupid like that. I was so ready to fight you. I’m really at lose right now. I don’t know how to feel about the fact that you don’t give a shit about me, you just want this place clean.” the stranger chuckled while pushing his cigarette against the wall to extinguish it. "Still, I appreciate the fact that you didn’t make this situation about types. You’re one of the first people I met to not immediately point out that the way I dress and behave isn’t very omega-like.”

...

Wait. That guy was an omega?!

The cigarette smell in the air was so strong that he had completely missed the fact that the person he had been talking to this whole time was an omega.

Not that it made much difference in the matter on hand, now that he thought about it.

"I didn’t realize you were an omega. I'm sorry if I offended you somehow.” Alfred quickly apologized before returning to the main point of that discussion. “Yeah, but seriously, dude, can you leave this place clean this week?”

The stranger crossed his arms over his chest, staring at the floor. He seemed a bit pensive but he didn’t appear to feel any particular emotion about Alfred's request.

“What is your name?” he ended up asking.

Uhhh. He wasn’t going to put bad things in Alfred’s locker if he knew this information, would he?

“Ah, well… I mean… You know…”

"You're having so much trouble remembering your own name." the stranger laughed, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. "Well, I suppose it would be in good manners to introduce myself first. My name is Arthur Kirkland. I'm eighteen and I play the guitar.”

What an odd introduction. That was kind like seeing a character profile in a game.

Alfred was no longer understanding anything that was happening but hell if he would question it. Honestly, he just wanted the roof clean and to escape that situation without getting any enemies.

"My name… My name is Alfred…" Alfred slowly and awkwardly extended his hand to Arthur for a greeting. That's what he should be doing, right? Since they were introducing each other. "I'm sixteen and… I like science."

Arthur didn’t take his hand immediately. He just looked at it, as if he didn’t know what to do with it, keeping his arms crossed over his chest. Then, he raised his eyes and stared into Alfred's so intensely that Alfred felt obligated to avert his first. Only after all this, finally, finally, he took Alfred’s  hand and gave it a strong, firm shake.

“Talk to me if we see each other again.” the omega said to him.

* * *

 

“... and then I was like ‘sure’ and I left because it was getting late but he stayed there. I guess he was waiting for his friends. When I was walking down the stairs, I bumped into some alphas who dressed pretty much like him. Who would have thought that the roof of our school was a punk meeting spot, huh? That’s so overdone. Why not go just to a dark alley or something?”

"It sounds like you had a very scary experience, Alfred.” said his best friend, Kiku, from across the table in their club room, writing ‘ _Astronomy club_ _Special Meeting - open to visitors_ ’. on a poster in huge letters

It was a nice Thursday afternoon and they were preparing posters to inform people about their event. Kiku was the responsible for writing in the posters while Alfred decorated them with drawings of stars, planets and comets. Alfred’s drawings looked a bit like a children’s drawing but according to Kiku that was a good thing because it made their club seem a little more casual and easy to enter. Alfred wasn’t sure if he should take offense with that or not.  

Making the posters started as a fun and exciting task. It was cool to think that those would be all around the school and that people might get interested in their club activities because of them! However, over time, it quickly switched from a fun, creative activity to repetitive manual work and Alfred was starting to get bored out of his mind.

So while they worked on it, Alfred decided to distract himself by telling Kiku about his encounter with that strange omega the day before.

"Nah, it wasn’t exactly scary. It was just… kinda weird.”

That omega was very different from most people that Alfred knew. He was able to quickly notice that Alfred was an alpha, which almost never happened to him, and behaved in a way that made it impossible for Alfred to figure out if his “talk to me if we see each other again” sentence was an offer of friendship or a threat.

Instead of being afraid or impressed, Alfred simply didn’t know what to make of him.

"Your whole conversation was a bit odd, indeed.” Kiku stopped doing his job and put a hand on his chin, thoughtfully. “What did he mean by 'talk to me if we see each other again'?”

Though Alfred had been the one to start that conversation, he knew that was a bad time to overanalyze that subject. They still had to finish that last poster and put them up.

“I have no clue.” Alfred sighed, briefly closing his eyes and shaking his head “Also, please don’t stop working. I know you have to go home early and my handwriting is awful.”

Kiku resumed writing on the posters but he quickly added up a question:

"Do you think he will go after you?"

“He didn’t seem interested in that.” Alfred replied unconcerned while finishing his last drawing. “I think I'll be fine as long as I don’t interrupt his time on the roof.”

He had nothing against Arthur and he hoped Arthur had nothing against him. Alfred would be in seriously trouble if that wasn’t the case. He wasn’t _remotely_ intimidating and if he fought with an ant, he would probably lose.

“Okay, we’re finished here.” Kiku stated with satisfaction after putting an exclamation at the end of the last sentence he had to write for the posters. "Now, please, my friend, put your long legs to work and hang these around the school."

Aww, _man_!

“Why me?” Alfred asked, pouting. “I've worked so hard today.”

"Alfred, while I appreciate the fact that you've spent a couple of hours doodling on our posters, as the club leader you have to take care of our most important tasks.” Kiku insisted, possibly being passive-aggressive, taking their finished work and placing it against Alfred's chest. “The task of deciding at which points in the school to hang these posters can affect how many people will come or not to our event. It is a task of high importance. One of the highest levels of importance. Please go already.”

Meh.

The betas on his club came with this talk, like " _You're the only alpha in the club! You have to be the leader! We need someone STRONG in that position!_ " just to use his position as an excuse to make him do most of the work at the club.

Regardless, Alfred did his best to be a good leader, even if it sometimes meant doing a bunch of boring chores that no one wanted to do.

He grabbed the posters and started walking down the hallways, choosing the right walls to hang them on. The school was quite empty there at that time and it felt a little weird when it was so quiet, so there was an internal fight between Alfred's instincts of ‘get out of here, this is a horror movie waiting to happen’ and his sense of responsibility as a good leader. He decided to keep doing his job but he was a bit on edge. School definitively looked creepy when the sun was going down and there was almost no one around.

That’s why, when a hand touched his shoulder while he was putting a poster next to the school lockers, he couldn’t help but let out a loud and high-pitched scream, covering his face with his hands.

“Heh. What’s wrong with you? Did you think I was a ghost?”

The person behind him laughed, keeping his hand on Alfred’s shoulder, despite the way it made him react. Alfred recognized that voice, that accent and especially that smugness.

Oh, it was _that_ guy.

Alfred turned his face towards him with a small frown. He thought he had the right to be a little pissed off in that situation.

Once again, that omega was in black clothes, using piercings, ridiculously tight pants, and a grin.

“Is this the poster for your event? The one you'll do on the roof this week?” he asked, leaning over Alfred's shoulder to see it better. He was too close. Waaaay more than it was necessary.

Was he doing this just to mess around with him? Due to their current proximity, Alfred could vaguely sense the sweet smell that informed him that the person at his side was an omega, although it was still mostly disguised by his cigarette smell.

“Yep, dude. How many events do you think I would do on the school roof in a week? It’s the astronomy club, not the ‘party on the roof’ club.” Alfred asked, instantly covering his mouth in regret right after saying it. He couldn’t control his smart mouth at certain times. This was a little irritating to his friends and family and it could be fatal around strangers like Arthur.

Luckily for him, instead of getting upset, Arthur seemed to enjoy that remark.

“Pfft. You're right.” he laughed amused, patting Alfred's arm as if they were old friends sharing a joke. He had a good sense of humor, apparently. Phew.

"Listen. This event of yours will be open to visitors, right?"

“Yep.”

"What would you say if I showed up there?" he asked with a smirk and a glint in his eyes that reminded Alfred of a jaguar about to get his prey.

Was that a tricky question?

“Er… ‘Welcome to the astronomy club. I'm the club's leader, Alfred Franklin Jones. Would you like to learn about constellations?’” Alfred just recited to Arthur the speech he had prepared for the day with a look of ‘what the hell did you expect’ on his face.

What else could he possibly say if Arthur came to the event? ' _Get out of here! This is not a place for punks like you!_ '. I mean, c’mon. They were not living in the sixties suburbs.

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Arthur sighed, perhaps slightly disappointed, moving away from him. Maybe he was expecting a fight again. That guy was worse than an alpha. Speaking of which… "Jones, I have to say. You're one of the weirdest alphas I've ever met.”

Ouch. That was the second time Arthur told him he was weird and they barely knew each other.

“Yeah, probably.” Alfred agreed bitterly without really agreeing, while putting up the last poster remaining. He was feeling slightly sour about what Arthur said. He really wanted to go home.

Alfred was about to leave without saying a word because, at this point, he thought he had figured Arthur out. Arthur thought he was a weirdo and was just making fun of him. In this aspect, he wasn’t that different from most omegas Alfred knew. At least he wasn’t a total douche about it and Alfred could still ignore him.

The problem is that, apparently, Arthur didn’t want to be ignored.

“Hey! Where is your house?!” he shoot at Alfred’s back while he walked away.

What. Why the hell would he tell Arthur that??

"Near a police station. Also, the cops there tend to get suspicious of, like, everyone around.” Alfred lied, trying to discourage Arthur from following him.

Instead, it just made Arthur laugh and move closer to him, patting him on the back.

"You’re such an awful  liar, it's almost sad."

Oh well.

"I'll go with you and protect you." Arthur proudly offered. “I cannot leave such clumsy and frightened alpha walking down the streets alone.”

“I don’t need protection." Alfred brushed him off, starting to walk to the exit without waiting for him. “What would someone steal from me? My homework? My braces?”

"I like how you're not offended by the idea of being protected by an omega but rather by the idea that someone would have something to steal from you." Arthur pointed out, and despite the half-mocking look he gave Alfred saying so, his voice sounded quite appreciative. "You really are an interesting guy.”

Arthur continued to follow Alfred out of school. This time, making sure to always stay a couple of steps behind him, instead of walking by his side.

“I thought you said I was _weird_.” Alfred reminded him, not wanting to let it go.

"Oh, one thing doesn’t cancel the other.” Arthur casually retorted. "As you may have guessed by looking at me."

* * *

 

Arthur Kirkland was legitimately astonished when he had had his first heat at age of twelve and discovered that he was an omega, not an alpha like his three older siblings. No one in the Kirkland family had suspected Arthur would be a different type than his brothers. He played all the games his brothers played, had a short temper and a strong personality. Clearly, he seemed to be heading to be an alpha like them.

It was true that he got cold easily compared to his brothers and it was true that wearing their old clothes was very uncomfortable on his skin, but Arthur could tolerate these annoyances without complaining, which for a long time made him and his family think he was an alpha.

Arthur's first heat changed everything in his life. His entire image to the world changed due to something his body did every six months and it fucking sucked. His parents changed their behavior with him, speaking less of Arthur’s dream career as a musician and more about handsome alphas musicians; telling him how he should look for such a husband with that profession and pursue a more stable career. His brothers stopped playing carelessly with him and began to treat him as a delicate thing, becoming much more suspicious of Arthur's friendship with alphas of his age.

The worst part was that Arthur's friends changed their behavior as well. He had always been with a group of alphas and they were all good friends and had a lot of fun together. Then, came his bloody first heat and Arthur started to smell sweet, which made all his friends become idiots around him and start fighting each other for him before they even asked Arthur what he thought of all this. He ended up having to reject them all. At the same time.

At age of fourteen, after moving to the United States and getting a chance to start over, Arthur was fed up with being mistaken for an omega who wanted to be protected and disputed by alphas. It wasn’t that his personality had changed that much. He just had to be more obvious about it so that people would get the message. Clothes could help with this, he thought. He could use some piercings too so people would know that he could stand pain. Dumb logic but hey, he was fourteen and they ended up looking pretty cool.

The only problem with Arthur’s current look is that it made not only alphas but a good amount of people in general to start avoiding him. Apparently, if you dress in a certain way, you get automatically labeled as a rebel, even if you haven’t done anything rebellious in your whole life.

The biggest irony of that was that for a long time, everything Arthur had done was with his parents permission. It was only after he got into too much trouble in his school just because of his looks and after he became a loner just because he was too punk for the average students and too average for the punks that Arthur decided to go all the way through in his transformation. If people were going to judge him anyway, heck, he might as well have some fun with it.

He started to hang out with older students, who introduced him to all the fun of getting drunk, smoking long drags of fags and not giving a shit about adult criticism.

Unfortunately, in a more adult version of the events that had happened in his childhood friends group, many of the guys in Arthur’s high school group tried to sleep with him. Arthur blamed it entirely in his skinny jeans, since he refused to believe that alphas would like him for his personality.

Unlike many believed, Arthur had rejected every one of the alphas who had approached him with these intentions. No alpha had seemed strong enough to his criteria. None of them had been able to make Arthur think, "I simply can’t resist this person."

He was a strong omega, so he concluded that he wanted an especially strong alpha for himself. He didn’t found someone that strong yet and that’s why he dismissed everyone who tried to court him. Being strong wasn’t just a matter of physical strength. Arthur had no interest in alphas that were just muscles. Despite their brute strength, alphas were foolish. So easy to tease and manipulate.

Alfred, on the other hand, wasn’t the strong alpha he wanted as a boyfriend but he was a pleasant surprise in Arthur’s week, nonetheless. He was so different from the other alphas Arthur knew. Though clearly he was nervous about his presence, he spoke in a totally sincere and natural way with him, which was something that Arthur really liked. It was rare for him to be able to talk to an alpha who didn’t want to fuck him or fight him and he had found their conversation at the roof on the other day oddly entertaining.

It would be nice if he could talk to him more often, Arthur thought. Getting to know him a little better would be nice. Arthur wanted to approach that boy.

* * *

 

Seriously, what the heck did Arthur wanted from Alfred? What was going on in his mind?

“What do you think about your country’s school system?”

This was the tenth question he made in a roll! "What is your favorite song?" "What is your favorite movie?" "What is your sign?" "Do you think there is life after death?"… He was asking so many things! He didn’t even wait for Alfred to answer one before making the next one! It was as if he was throwing a bunch of them into the air just to see if Alfred would catch one.

It was amazing that he still had not given up following Alfred in his way home, considering that they had been walking for fifteen minutes and the most that Alfred had managed to say in response to his questions were uncertain sounds like "eh", "hm" and "uh".

Probably realizing that asking him dozens of questions wasn’t working to start a conversation because Alfred always got stuck thinking about what to answer, Arthur changed his strategy and instead of a question, he made an observation:

"You live in a nice neighborhood."

Alfred's neighborhood was, indeed, a very good one. It had loads of trees, streetlights with a soft glow that didn’t impede him of observing the stars from his room’s window and was, generally, a very safe place. The only problem in Alfred’s neighborhood was that it was somewhat conservative. If anyone saw them walking together, they could make faces at Arthur, which would totally suck. As much as Alfred didn’t understand what was Arthur's deal, he didn’t seem to be a bad person by his actions so far.

“Yeah, I know. It looks like the typical neighborhood where nothing happens until a serial killer arrives.” Alfred answered and this time, he ended up feeling some inner satisfaction at himself when he saw Arthur laughing at what he said.

"One with green locs and piercings, perhaps?” Arthur smirked.

“Nah. The thing with serial killers is that they are hard to detect in a crowd and that’s why nobody finds them. You, on the hand, would be the first to be investigated if anything happened.”

“Yeah, true.” Arthur agreed, grunting and putting his hands in his pockets, probably thinking of moments in his past. "It's curious how, coincidentally, I'm always the suspect when something happens in our school. I may not even be present at school on the day or working when the incident occurred  and yet, I'm never out of suspicion.” he sighed.

“That’s a bummer, man." Alfred sympathized with Arthur on this one. He could see this happening all the time with him. After all, Alfred’s very own first impression on him was that he looked suspicious as fuck. "Do you really work or were you just mentioning a hypothetical situation?"

“Sometimes I work to get some extra money because my parents don’t want to pay for some of my stuff.” Arthur explained "I dye my hair at a beauty salon so I need to… "

Alfred couldn’t even let him finish the phrase. He exploded in laughter.

“PFFFFFT! Seriously? _You_ go to a beauty saloon???” Alfred had to cover his mouth to contain his laughter and he did it so suddenly and so hard that he practically slapped his own lips.

Arthur looked so "down with the system" that it was absolutely hilarious to picture him in the hall, sitting next to a bunch of old ladies doing their nails and curling their hair.

“I don’t want my locs to look bad!" Arthur replied, agitated and nervous. Alfred could bet he was just embarrassed. "Don’t you see how complicated my hair is? It doesn’t look that messy on purpose! It’s just the way it is! If I didn’t dye it in the salon, it would probably… !”

“Alfie!!!”

Suddenly they got interrupted by Alfred’s mom running at their direction as if Alfred was a hostage being returned home. Alfred felt his face burn hearing that nickname. Why did his mom had to call him like that in front of a visibly cooler guy?

By the way, how did she know he was coming? He and Arthur were still in front of their next-door neighbor's house, they didn’t even got to his front yard. Was she watching from the window, waiting for him to come back? Geez, she could really be overprotective sometimes.

“Alfie, is everything okay?” she grabbed his shoulders with a worried look, giving only a glance simultaneously accusatory and threatening to Arthur, before turning back to speak with Alfred in the same protective manner. “Let's go home, shall we?”

Oh, his mother was trying to protect him from Arthur. She had all her alpha-mother instincts on to defend him from freaking Arthur.

Gosh, that was even more embarrassing than being called by a nickname in front of him.

Arthur was being overwhelmingly polite in the face of that open rudeness. He just stayed in his corner, lowering his eyes, shrinking his shoulders and kicking leaves on the sidewalk. He didn’t even try to make a sarcastic remark about the situation or anything. Alfred could guess that he probably wasn’t intimidated by his 40-something mother, who was shorter than him, even though she was an alpha. He was just avoiding conflict and Alfred could appreciate that.

“Yes, mom. I’m okay. I'm coming in. But before that…" Alfred turned to Arthur in a movement that surprised equally the omega and his mother. “Arthur, since you walked me here, don’t you want a glass of lemonade?”

Alfred wouldn’t have done this invitation if his mother hadn’t been totally rude to Arthur, but now he felt compelled to compensate for her actions. It helped that he no longer felt threatened by Arthur, considering that he was the kind of punk that went to a beauty saloon and his dumbfounded expression at that moment looked almost cute.

“Should I ...?”

“You must be thirsty”. Alfred stated, grabbing his wrist and pulling it lightly, trying to persuade him to follow him. He tried to subtly make his mother get a grip of how rude she was by adding "You came _all this way_ just to make sure I _would get home safely._ It's the _least_ I can do for you.”

Arthur gave Alfred a soft smile, probably understanding what he was doing.

"If you insist, I won’t refuse a drink."

They went together to Alfred's house, got in, and went into the kitchen. Alfred took a box of lemonade out of the refrigerator and poured a glass for Arthur. They didn’t say a word during that entire time but they exchanged glances and smiles in a silent conversation.

It wasn’t possible to have a complex silent conversation, though, so it just went something like "Did you see your mother's face?", "YEP." and laughter. It still was pretty fun.

After Arthur finished drinking his juice, Alfred accompanied him to the door and asked how far was his house.

"Oh, don’t worry. It’s near our school. That's why when I saw you were going to walk home, I thought I could follow you there. I figured you didn’t live too far away either. It should take me about twenty minutes to get home.”

“That’s a _lot_!” Alfred exclaimed, equally concerned and shocked.

"Hey, don’t worry about that. I have to walk a lot to keep fitting in these jeans.” Arthur joked, tapping his thighs lightly to emphasize his point. Alfred genuinely laughed at this. He was slowly realizing that Arthur was actually a very funny guy.

The street lights began to shine. It was getting late and yet, for some reason, there was a drop of hesitation on both sides during their farewell, a silent pause, one might say, before Arthur finally turned his back to him and started to walk away from Alfred’s house.

“So.. I’ll see you around?” Alfred waved awkwardly at Arthur’s back after he walked through the door.

“Of course, you will.” Arthur turned to Alfred, waving back to him with a brief smile. "We go to the same school, after all.”

  



	2. Acquaintances

For the next couple of days, Arthur waited and waited for Alfred to show up on the school’s roof again. He would eventually, since he had to check if the place was clean. It was just a matter of time.

Now, for some reason, Arthur was feeling sort of anxious about the thought of what their next meeting would be like. While waiting and smoking on the roof (and occasionally telling his friends who used that place to shag different omegas to get the fuck out), he constructed hypothetical scenarios in his mind of how his next encounter with Alfred would take place. He wondered what he could say when that happened.

" _Hey! How is your mother, Alfie?_ " No, that sounded like he was trying to start a fight. " _You finally came!_ " ... Hm. Wouldn’t it sound too desperate? " _Hello, handsome_ ". No, that would be weird. Alfred wasn’t the kind of person that Arthur felt comfortable to hit on just for laughs. " _Welcome to my roof!_ " Good lord, that was bad. What was wrong with his head?

Arthur couldn’t find a good opening line on the first day, so when Alfred didn’t show up, he was glad to have more time to think about it. Luckily, he watched a movie that same night which gave him an idea and that got solved.

However, another day passed and that boy didn’t showed up. Then another.

On the third day of waiting for him, Arthur was personally offended by Alfred's absence on that roof. He HAD to check if the area was clean for HIS event, RIGHT? Why hadn’t he come yet? Did he trust so much that Arthur would keep that place clean? That freaking idiot! It wasn’t like Arthur was forced to do it!

Arthur, who had spent all those days being careful not to mess that place up, crumpled his fag against the wall, leaving the ashes to spread on the floor. Not satisfied yet, he threw it on the floor and smashed it with his shoe. He felt bitter and angry and he didn’t know if it was at Alfred or at himself.

Unfortunately, after taking out his anger, Arthur began to think more clearly. As if a cloud had left his eyes, he saw what he had done and immediately regretted his actions.

Oh, shit.

He had to get a broom and a shovel to clean it! Alfred's event was that night!

Arthur rushed to get these things in a cleaning cabinet when he bumped his head on the chest of an alpha ridiculously taller than him. Arthur was very impatient already so when he looked up at the fella who couldn’t wait one more second to open the door, he was about to shout, "Look where you're going, you fucker!" but the words died in his throat when he met the confused blue eyes of Alfred Franklin Jones.

Oh, heavens. That guy was so ridiculously tall. He usually kind of shrunken down when he walked, so that wasn’t always obvious but damn. Their eyes were not even on the same level.

“Oh, hi... Sorry, go ahead.” Alfred stepped aside, giving Arthur room to pass.

Arthur didn’t move. Now that Alfred had finally arrived, he really didn’t want to leave.

Nervously, he clenched his fists and ran his tongue over his lower lip, trying to remember the lines he had thought of for when they met again. What was it? Something he had seen in a movie once… Bollocks! His mind wasn’t on his favour that day! Since he wasn’t remembering what he planned, he had to improvise.

"Did you left to the last possible day to come here again and clean this place? How very irresponsible of you.” he said in a slightly resentful tone, which escaped by complete accident.

For better or for worse, Alfred didn’t let himself be affected by this accusation.

"Well, I had other things to take care off. What matters is that it will be clean today.” he answered in a weary sigh, moving ahead. Arthur noticed that he was dragging a huge bag with paperboard sticking out. He probably had a lot to do there.

Arthur came right after him, trying to look as casual as possible about following him.

Naturally, since the spot where Arthur smoked was near the entrance to the roof, the little, tinny mess he had made there was quickly noticed by Alfred, who got justifiably very furious about it.

In Alfred’s defense, one could say he didn’t jump to conclusions. He first looked at the stained wall, looking closer to see what it was and after realizing there was a trail of ashes, he followed it with his eyes until he saw the fag Arthur had just crushed on the floor. He even got to the trouble of bending down to examine just how recent that fag was, before finally losing his temper at once and turning his angry eyes on Arthur, facing him accusingly:

“What the hell, Kirkland! Why did you make all this mess for? This is so extra! Did you try to appease the smoker's god or something? If you couldn’t clean up after smoking, couldn’t you at least throw your fucking cigarette in the trash? The fuck, man!”

Arthur felt a faint, very weak pang of guilt at that accusation. His eyes involuntarily drifted to the other side. Yes, he intentionally made a huge mess and that must have looked a little obvious. He was feeling slightly upset about the impression Alfred might have got on him as a person.

On the other hand…

“S-Since you never came back here, I didn’t think it would make a difference if I messed up this place or not!” he shouted back, quietly cursing himself for stuttering.

Alfred stood up, still with an angry countenance, putting his hands in his pockets and seeming to evaluate silently whether this fight was worth it or not.

"You were the one who said you wanted to smoke in here. What good would it do for me to come everyday to clean your mess?” he grumbled softly, almost to himself.

Well, uh… He had a point.

Arthur hated to concede but it made sense for Alfred to not come to the roof until the last day. Arthur’s requests aside, even if he had come earlier to put up the stuff for his event, the janitor probably would take everything down on the next day. Actually, there was nothing wrong with what he did and definitively nothing that justified Arthur making a mess there just out of spite. The thing is… Deep, deep down, a small part of Arthur was expecting Alfred to visit simply because he knew Arthur would be there. Truth to be said, he was a bit upset to see that it didn’t happen.

"Can I take care of this place now?" Alfred asked, interrupting Arthur's thoughts. "Class is over, you know? You can go home.”

“No!” Arthur exclaimed quickly. Maybe a little too fast.

“Er… Huh?”

Alfred looked a bit astonished at his reaction, maybe even slightly confused. It didn’t matter, though. Hell, Arthur really couldn’t let this opportunity escape. He didn’t want to miss his chance to spend time with Alfred. He had been waiting for it almost a week.

To talk to Alfred was a singular and interesting experience for Arthur. It was different from the experience of spending time with any other alpha. Alfred was fun, spontaneous, and somehow unique. Arthur never felt challenged or tense next to him. The only thing about him that made Arthur nervous was the constant fear in his mind of fucking up and losing the chance to make a good friend.

"I... I can help you!" Arthur energetically offered with a determined look. “I have nothing better to do now, anyway!”

Instead of being a grateful fella and saying " _Oh my, what an incredibly unselfish and generous gesture on your part! I can barely thank you enough for it, my good sir. There is hope for our generation, after all!_ ", Alfred's reaction was…

"Do you really have nothing better to do than helping me cleaning up this place? Seriously?” he asked with a pitying look that was pretty much insulting. There was limits to Arthur’s patience!

"Do you want my help or not?!" he snapped, clenching his fists.

Alfred put his hand under his chin and looked up, seeming to consider that offer carefully.

“Can I make complaints if you do something wrong?” he checked with Arthur.

Urgh.

"As long as you settle for me complaining back, yes. You can.”

Alfred smiled and held out his hand to him.

“We have a deal.”

* * *

 

To be honest, Alfred didn’t feel remotely guilty about putting Arthur to do the heaviest chores like sweeping and wiping the floor while he took care of the decoration, doing stuff like glue paper stars to the walls or putting a poster on the door saying “Watch the stars with us!”

Was it fair for Arthur to do the most boring work while Alfred did the creative stuff? Fuck yeah, it was. Alfred still was pretty pissed about the fact that Arthur made a big mess on the roof, right on the day of his club's event, and was about to just walk away, leaving it as it was. If they hadn’t bumped into each other, Alfred would have to clean it all up himself! That would suck!

At least Arthur was behaving well now. He would let out a low curse here and there when things got tiresome but, otherwise, he was cooperating perfectly. Alfred was actually kinda happy to see him helping like this. So much so that this time he was the one wanting to start a conversation with Arthur.

"You came from the UK, right?" he asked as Arthur pulled out a bunch of webs from one corner of a wall. "How long have you been in the States?"

"About three years, I think.” Arthur replied, still concentrated in his task. “For rather cliché reasons. My father got transferred to a branch in the United States. You know how it is.”

"What does your father work with?" Alfred asked curiously, stopping gluing stars on the walls to face Arthur for a moment.

“Oh, he works at a publishing house. My mother is a freelance translator. That's how they met.” Arthur explained. "My whole family is composed of literature fans.”

“Including you?” Alfred asked half jokingly.

“Especially me.” Arthur answered, raising his eyes to meet Alfred’s with a proud smile. “I'm a big fan of the classics. The novels of the nineteenth century are my favorites.”

That was a bit surprising.

It was impossible to put that omega inside a box. He didn’t have the air of an omega, a beta or an alpha. Although he clearly adopted a visual and attitude of a punk, he wasn’t stuck in it and allowed himself to like unexpected things, which was cool. Honestly, the more Alfred talked to him, the more interesting that guy seemed.

“What about you? Do you have any reading preferences, Jones?” Arthur asked with a grin, looking straight at him. Alfred had to hurry back to his duties so it wouldn’t seem like he'd been distracted all that time looking at the omega. "Or do you just _look_ like a nerd?"

Apparently, a person could be interesting AND irritating at the same time under certain circumstances.

“I like to read comic books, scientific journals and books on archaeology.” Alfred replied, choosing to ignore that insult. In a way, his answer worked for both of Arthur's questions. Yep, he was a huge nerd.

"You should read more fiction books." Arthur recommended.

He seemed to have finished with the webs and now he was standing up and tapping on his own pants to take the dirty off them. Thinking about it, he had taken a long time to get that web out for someone who seemed so focused on that task every time Alfred looked at him.

“Comics are good enough for me.”

“Romance novels can help you in real-life romances, though.” Arthur argued with a teasing grin.

Alfred looked away immediately. Oh damn. That went through him like a bullet. He walked over to the bag he had brought and sat down on the floor, going over the things inside it absently minded. He had to get something there. He wasn’t remembering what it was but didn’t he had to? Everything in his body was just saying “do something, distract yourself, there must be something on the bag”.

That was a touchy subject for him. He didn’t know if Arthur realized that or if he just made a lucky guess but, anyway, damn.

Usually, Alfred didn’t think much of romance. Still, it didn’t mean he didn’t want it. It was just more comfortable not to be interested in anyone. It was easier to be indifferent from the beginning than to be disappointed later and suffer.

After all, what crazy omega would be attracted to him?

“Meh, I doubt that a book about a poor omega of good heart conquering the affections of a rich and imposing alpha can help my case.” he ended up saying to Arthur.

Nineteenth-century novels never had protagonists like him. They were always about alphas completely different from him. Strong, confident, intimidating. Docile awkward alphas like Alfred, in the rare occasions they appeared, were always the butt of the jokes, the alpha's best friend or just the negative example to make the protagonist look good in comparison. They were never the target of genuine romantic feelings from an omega.

That didn’t happen only on the novels from the nineteenth century either. If he put romantic movies made that same year on television, he'd still see that problem. Alfred could barely remember an alpha on television that looked like him.

While he was lost in these thoughts, he probably missed some things going on in that fraction of time because, suddenly, he woke up from these daydreams, feeling a breath against his ear. Arthur had come over and bent over his back without him noticing.

"And what is your case, Alfred F. Jones?"

Something about the way Arthur asked that question made a shiver run through Alfred's spine. He was so close to Alfred's face that Alfred could feel his hair brush against his cheek.

"W-What ... What do you mean?"

“What are you looking for in a relationship?” Arthur went on. He had a daredevil smile and tone while he added the words "Are you looking for a well-behaved omega to introduce to mom and dad? I bet you want a blushing virgin who will wait with you until marriage, right? Such a good boy.”

Arthur was just teasing him. Again.

Alfred was having serious thoughts about that but Arthur was simply making the joke "you're such an upright nerd, haha," so giving a decent answer to him was just not worth it.

"No, I want an omega that can take my humongous penis and like it." he ended up answering, sardonic, feeling his alpha instincts to assure his strength come over his head for a bit.

And then an interesting reaction happened in Arthur. His scent changed. It was only for a second, but it was a change so strong that Alfred could notice it, even under the smell of cigarettes that covered Arthur's natural scent.

Alfred got kinda awestruck with that change and even more so with how fast Arthur managed to reverse it and go back to his usual discreet scent.

"Then, there's an aspect in which you're a typical alpha.” Arthur cleared his throat, moving away from Alfred and not looking directly at him for a while. "You're easy to tease if it’s about your relationship with omegas. I didn’t even think you were interested in omegas, so this is a bit shocking.”

What.

Where in the world had he drawn that conclusion from???

“Why did you think I wasn’t interested in omegas???” Alfred asked a little irritably. While it didn’t bother him to be assumed as not straight, it was kinda annoying having complete strangers came to this conclusion just because he wasn’t a typical alpha.

"You never seem to have that kind of interest in me." Arthur replied with a shrug. "Your scent hardly changes in my presence.”

Ohhhh, and that surely said it all about Alfred's sexual orientation!

"You talk like it's impossible for a straight alpha not to be interested in you." Alfred mocked, rolling his eyes.

Arthur’s smug smile did little to dismiss that accusation.

“Are you straight, then?” he asked skeptical.

"As far as I know, yes! I like omegas, at the very least!” Alfred blushed. He was always too sincere and because of that, he had accidentally revealed a little more than Arthur deserved to know.

"As far as I know? At the very least?" Arthur noticed that little details that Alfred had let escape and didn’t waste a second to point them out. "That means you're not sure." he concluded. He was practically emanating victory now.

 

 

Well, fuck.

 

"I think personality is more important than anything, so... yeah, I could be attracted to an alpha or a beta, I guess. This has not happened so far but I dunno. It could happen. Personality is my highest priority over everything, including gender. ” Alfred admitted, trying to sound casual about it. “Now that I think about it, my criteria explains why I'm not attracted to you.” he added with a smirk, reveling in Arthur's offended expression.

Hmpf. He totally deserved this.

Arthur snorted and frowned, opening his mouth probably to complain. However, when he saw Alfred getting up to leave, he promptly went after him, holding his arm before he could walk through the door. That completely discredited whatever anger he wanted to convey before.

"Why are you leaving? Are we done here?” he checked, tugging at Alfred's arm in a gesture that Alfred registered for a second as cute, before hitting himself internally over it.

Arthur’s worried expression was the clue Alfred had that Arthur was thinking he was upset. Alfred wasn’t, though. He wasn’t leaving because of their conversation. He was leaving because, despite going over his bag while he thought about his unsuccessful love life, he had nothing else to do with it. They had finished organizing the space. There was only one thing left for him to do.

"You're done. I still have to get the observation instruments up here.” Alfred explained, indicating the exit with his head.

"Don’t you want help carrying those things? I can do it.” Arthur offered, still holding his arm.

That was pretty considerate of him but _ehhh,_ better pass on that one. For someone who had no interest in that event, he had already helped Alfred a lot. Alfred would feel guilty if he continued to ask Arthur for favors.

“Thanks for real, man, but it's getting late.” Alfred smiled briefly, patting the top of Arthur's head. "You should go home. The other club members should already be arriving soon and they can help me with the rest.”

"It would be a waste of time for me to come back now" Arthur contested, raising an eyebrow. “I'm going to attend your club's event, so I'd rather be waiting for other people with you.”

Those were unexpected news.

Did Arthur really want to attend an astronomy event? What interest did he have in that? He hadn’t given the slightly hint to like astronomy all this time!

"No offense but what?" Alfred ended up asking, unable to disguise his confusion. "Why would you come? Do you even like astronomy?"

Instead of having an answer on the tip of his tongue as usual, Arthur looked at Alfred with wide eyes, as if Alfred was a detective asking where he was in the night of a murder. He seemed completely lost and even a little cornered with that question.

At last he answered with frowning brows and a slightly flushed face:

“It's an open event and this is a free country!” he pointed his finger at Alfred's chest.

Did he want to look intimidating? It didn’t work very well when he looked more embarrassed than angry.

"I can come and I'll come!” Arthur repeated, confrontational. “Do you have something against it?”

Although this explanation was quite childish and unnecessarily hostile, Alfred had nothing against it. He wouldn’t complain about people coming to his club's event.

Not to mention that, frankly, Arthur was no longer being able to intimidate him.

* * *

 

The star-gazing night of the astronomy club was a great event for Alfred. Things went well, some people seemed interested in joining the club and Arthur's presence made that night so much fun to Alfred.

Arthur didn’t stay there just out of politeness, with a bored expression on his face, as Alfred thought he would. He was extremely excited by the power of the telescope that Alfred got to the event and pleased to watch the night sky, drinking lemonade and talking about constellations.

Although he could not recognize them, Arthur knew a great deal about them because he had enough knowledge of Greek mythology. He told Alfred a series of stories that made him understand better why each constellation had its name and the reason the Ancient Greeks saw shapes in sets of stars. It was super-fascinating.

Arthur also helped Alfred and the rest of the club tidy up the place after the event ended. He wanted to accompany Alfred home again and only gave up on it after Alfred assured him that his father was coming to pick him up by car on his way back from work.

He was so thoughtful and nice towards him that Alfred felt a bit like an omega being courted. Not that he would admit it to anyone (and especially not to Arthur).

The events of that day made Alfred feel that a connection had been established between him and Arthur. It could be a weak and perhaps temporary connection but it was a connection nonetheless. He started to think a lot about Arthur. He wanted to talk to him about a number of things and learn more about that unique personality he had.

Yet, it seemed weird to simply go after Arthur for no reason. What if Arthur told him off because now they had nothing to do with each other anymore? Alfred didn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of one of the few omegas he got along with.

He asked his club's betas about it and they just made stupid comments about how Alfred was becoming the typical alpha, chasing after omegas. They also tried to discourage him from his idea of looking for Arthur, saying Arthur had a complicated relationship with alphas in general.

"There's a bunch of alphas interested in him.” informed Toris, one of the club members, in a meeting around the table in the club room that turned out to be a great counseling session for Alfred. “It’s probably due to the appeal of winning challenges that alphas like so much, since, as far as I know, he never went out with any of them. I heard that once a football player and a judo student fought in public because of him.”

Eh, that didn’t make much difference to Alfred. His intentions weren’t romantic. What if there were hundreds of alphas wanting to get into Arthur’s ridiculously tight pants? Alfred just wanted to talk to him again.

"I don’t know, Alfred. Just because he didn’t go out with them doesn’t mean he didn’t get involved with them, if you know what I mean.” Kiku commented, slightly embarrassed, partially hiding his face with his hand.

Again, what difference did it make? So what if Arthur had slept with the whole school? It’s not like Alfred worked with family planning! He had nothing to do with that aspect of Arthur's life!

He shouldn’t have asked his friends what they thought of Arthur. Much less casually admitted that he wanted to befriend him, to check their opinion about it. Apparently, everyone just wanted to see Arthur as a delinquent, like an omega or as a mixture of the two, as if Arthur’s whole being could be defined with two adjectives at most.

“I just want to be FRIENDS with him!” Alfred stood up, enraged, hitting his hands hard on the table. “You guys are AWFUL! I'm not going to listen to your bullshit anymore! This conversation is over!”

And with that, Alfred left the room without looking back, slamming the door hard to emphasize his point.

He still had a decision to make and unfortunately he was alone in it. His friends weren’t good counselors. His parents would be worse, he imagined. This time, Alfred could only rely on his own instincts to know what to do. And guess what? They were saying that he should for once in his life take the initiative and simply go after the person he wanted to talk to.

Alfred headed for the roof. That was where he met Arthur for the first time and the only place he imagined Arthur might be. He didn’t even have the key to open the door this time. He went there purely in the expectation that everything would happen as it had before. Arthur would have opened the door somehow and would be smoking alone, leaning against the wall near the entrance. He would bump into it, the two would start talking and somehow, everything would just flow between them.

He was right about almost everything, except that Arthur was not alone this time. There was an alpha leaning against the wall as Arthur stared coldly at him, arms folded across his chest, and the two immediately turned their attention to Alfred.

…

Could Alfred back off and pretend nothing had happened?

"Alfred, you finally came.” Arthur let out an impatient sigh. "I was telling this imbecile that I was waiting for you and he didn’t believe me.”

??? What??? They hadn’t agreed to meet there or anything! Was Arthur actually waiting for him or was that just an excuse to drive away the other alpha? What the hell was going on?!

The alpha, after briefly examining Alfred with his eyes, smirked, leaving Arthur aside and approaching Alfred to confront him.

"Hey, when you told me you were expecting an alpha, Kirkland, I wasn’t expecting this giant scarecrow.” he told Arthur, emitting an obvious sense of superiority over Alfred.

The situation was so freaking dangerous. Alfred had to be very careful with his next words. Any wrong movement could result in a fight and, inevitably, in Alfred getting his ass beaten.

Okay, he had to say something now… He couldn’t keep staring in silence at the other alpha while gaping in horror…

“Hey. At least compare me to one of those dolls who wag their arms at the gas stations. If you’re gonna insult me, be more accurate, dude.”

SHIT.

Why did Alfred's tongue act before he could control it? He was so going to get punched. He knew he was going to get punched now.

“Pffft. At least you have some sense of humor, scarecrow.” the alpha laughed in derision, putting a hand on Alfred's shoulder as he passed by, heading for the exit. “I’m going to assume you and Kirkland are just friends so I will let you alone… For now.” he pointed his finger at Alfred, leaving a warning “Just know that if you dare put your ridiculous smell in this omega, you should be ready for a fight.”

With that, that alpha finally went away to Arthur’s and ESPECIALLY Alfred’s relief.

Alfred had never taken part in fights over omegas and it would have been almost ironic for him to start getting into them for an omega he didn’t even want that way.

"Thanks for not challenging that guy for a territorial fight or something stupid like that.” Arthur sighed, leaving his shoulders visibly relax. "I would probably kill both of you if I saw such a scene."

Arthur was acting as if everything was under his control, even though he was being pressed against the wall by a guy he obviously didn’t like. Hey, make no mistakes. Alfred was the last one who could judge him for being scared to enter a fight with that alpha. Why that tough guy pose, though?

"I thought you'd been rescued on my arrival, considering you were using me as an excuse to scare that guy away." Alfred pointed out.

“Oh, lord, no.” Arthur smiled confidently, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture. "You were just my diplomatic solution to the confrontation, not my only alternative. When possible, I choose to solve my problems in a peaceful manner.”

Yeah, that made sense. Only an idiot would want to risk being punched in the face instead of just solving the situation with words. Alfred, however, still felt a little tempted to use that rare opportunity to tease Arthur for having technically rescued him.

"You mean I wasn’t your hero?" he asked with a huge grin, sitting next to where Arthur was standing. "Are you telling you wouldn’t have burst into tears if I hadn’t come?"

"Oh, of course you were my hero.” Arthur smirked back, sitting as well. “I don’t know what could possibly have happened to me if it wasn’t for your line about looking like a gas station doll.”

“You're welcome! You can always count on me!” Alfred smiled brightly, winking and giving Arthur a thumbs-up.

"Don’t say ‘you’re welcome’ for doing something like that, you doofus.” Arthur shook his head, scolding him while patting him on the shoulder. "How can I count on a hero who never shows up?"

"I don’t have the key to the roof anymore. How would I enter here? By the way, how do you come here?”

“Oh, that? I know how to unlock the door with a hair clip.”

Alfred’s face scrunched in disapproval instantly. Why on earth had that guy learned how to unlock doors with a hair clip? Did he honestly meant to say that he got that knowledge simply to have some time alone on the school’s roof?

"Don’t look at me like that! I'm no criminal!” Arthur complained, guessing what Alfred was thinking “I only learned this because my parents don’t want me to leave the house late at night and they always lock the back door! I may be a little rebellious but I'm not a fucking idiot.”

Rebellious but not an idiot was probably a great phrase to describe Arthur Kirkland.

"Well, that makes more sense.” Alfred answered, feeling a soft, found smile forming on his face. "You're still you, after all."

“What do you mean?” Arthur asked, glaring at Alfred suspiciously.

“Nothing, nothing. Hey, what did you eat on your lunch today?” he smiled, wrapping his arm around Arthur's shoulders and pulling him into a friendly half-hug. "The canteen’s food was disgusting today, right?"

“Stop trying to change the subject! And yes, it was pretty bad but I think American foods are bad overall!”

There were no direct words about what was happening. There was nothing official about it. Still, in Alfred's point of view, this was the moment that marked the beginning of their friendship.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, guys!!! 
> 
> My mind got blown away with all the support this fic received. Honestly. You guys are so freaking awesome. I did my best to translate the second part of the story as soon as possible because of you all. My special thanks to littlemaple, Liberty13roses, zombiepurplefox, Teapot1923, Lolovoicing, depressedandpie, MyCatHatIsOn, Missyinying, TheAmazingAl, Sheepish_Sheep, Uselessteacup, YuukiMe, King_Memnoch, RantingFangirl, Shade_Ubra, ax1kaiser, ForLoveOfLiberTea, LiberTeaIsGood, Cone_of_Depression, VivaDragnire, itslucie, tstysxckxx, caramelarschhut, Gamergal126, romsai and HikikomoriKuma for leaving reviews and all the guests who did the same!
> 
> Also, my special thanks to all the people who left reviews! I already answered those!=)
> 
> If you liked this chapter, please let me know your favorite parts and your feelings about it! I will be answering all the reviews i get so don't hesitate to send me your questions and thoughts!^_^
> 
> Byeee


	3. Friends

Three months passed. Spring was going away and Summer was coming.

Summer Break would soon start, which should be a good thing. Supposedly. Arthur Kirkland wasn’t looking forward to it.

Holidays meant a long time breaking his routine with Alfred and Arthur had developed a great appreciation for those late afternoons they spent together on the roof.

Alfred had become someone that Arthur truly considered as a friend. Probably the best friend he made in his entire life. He didn’t have ulterior motives toward Arthur and he never let the difference of their types interfere in anything between them. This made Arthur comfortable around him, which was great.

An interesting side of Alfred was that he didn’t like talking about romance or sex like other guys his age usually did. He would rather talk about the universe, about the mysteries of civilization, and, well, about who would win in a fight between two superheroes, which fast food chain was the best or how he would defeat a ghost if he were in a horror movie. Truth is if Alfred was just intellectualism all the time, he would be a bore, so Arthur liked that balance of interests in his personality.

Arthur had also developed an appreciation for the way Alfred, not presuming anything based on his appearance, asked him questions that no one had bothered to ask before.

Things like "What kind of music do you like?" and "What was your favorite cartoon when you were a kid?" Arthur was always very happy to answer these questions.

That was probably the first time Arthur had an opportunity to show so many portions of his personality to someone with no hesitation and not even a shade of fear that this could be used as a weapon against him later.

They’ve been friends for months, yet it felt like years. Somehow, in this short time, Arthur got so deeply attached to that gigantic, awkward alpha that he felt each day of Summer approaching as if he was convicted of a crime and awaiting for the execution of his sentence.

Alfred, on the other hand, seemed perfectly calm and even excited with the idea that Summer break was coming and he kept talking about all the places he wanted to go and all the things he wanted to do. That huge idiot. Couldn’t he see how easy it would be for a strange friendship like theirs to simply vanish with a little bit of distance between them?

On the last day of school, Arthur was no longer able to disguise that he knew that was the end.

"You look so grumpy. I bet you must love Winter, ya Summer hater.” Alfred joked that afternoon, pulling his cheek lightly, while Arthur frowned at him.

"No, that's not it.” Arthur sighed, hugging his own knees.

They were, as usual, sitting on the floor side by side with their backs against the wall just beside the entrance to the roof.

“What is it then? Are you going to have to take Summer classes or something?”

"No. I just..." Arthur bit his lower lip, feeling his heart ache for a moment. He wanted a fag so bad. That would make things easier. Damn the moment he decided to quit smoking near Alfred in consideration for his well-being. Oh, well. Screw it. That could be the end of their relationship. He had to be straightforward and tell the truth. "I'm… I’m going to miss you, Alfred…"

Alfred turned to him with his eyes wide open, looking both surprised and confused.

“Why? Are you going to go in a vacation or something?” Alfred asked, sounding honestly shocked. "You didn’t mention anything about it!"

Hm, what? Why was he acting like it was Arthur who didn’t care about abandoning him?

"Uh... no." he replied, feeling a bit stunned by Alfred's reaction. "I'm not going to do anything special this Summer.”

"Then, why wouldn’t we see each other?" Alfred asked in such a matter of fact way that he managed to leave Arthur completely disarmed. He spoke as if this was the obvious outcome of the situation instead of something that Arthur never imagined could realistically happen.

"You..." Arthur almost stammered. He managed to disguise it by pretending to cough and then asking almost in the same breath. “Are you saying you want to see me during Summer?”

“Duh, of course. We’ve been seeing each other every day for months. It would be weird if we ended communications just because Summer break started. Not to mention it's going to be cool to hang with you somewhere else, since I won’t have to worry about my classes or club activities for a while.”

Arthur felt as if his heart was releasing fireworks.

"Yeah. That could be fun, I suppose." he answered, the most casually he managed to sound.

"Can you give me your number? That would make it easier for us to catch up with each other and schedule something.”

"I don’t have a phone." Arthur admitted hesitantly, fidgeting discreetly. That was always a bit embarrassing to admit.

Alfred’s reaction to that was pretty much what he expected. Shock, of course. Because how could a single 17 years old person in the world not have a phone? Surely that was a sign of the end of times.

“What?! Why? Did your parents confiscate it??”

"Nothing like that. I'm just not a fan of phones.” Arthur shrugged. He was bad with technologies in general and, anyway, he didn’t want other people contacting him all the time. The thing is, he knew that not having a phone by personal choice made him look a bit like an old bitter person so he tried to avoid that topic.

"Oh, yeah? And how do you do to communicate with people who’re away?" Alfred frowned at him. “Do you send them a letter in a pigeon?”

 

 

That absolute wanker.

 

“I have a landline!” Arthur rebutted him, annoyed.

“Okay, okay. Please give me your house’s phone then.” Alfred smiled, rolling his eyes with amusement and passing his phone to Arthur, ready for him to add himself in his contact list. “If I can’t contact you, I'll send you a telegram or a message boy with my letter.”

“Idiot.” Arthur grumbled while typing his number on Alfred’s phone.

“Hipster.” Alfred answered with a teasing grin.

 

* * *

At that point in their friendship, Alfred didn’t mind his friends teasing him about him being a typical alpha chasing the omega who played hard to get. He also didn’t care anymore about his parents' disapproving faces when he started talking about Arthur at dinner. Arthur was a friend with whom he had a special relationship.

Alfred was by no means the popular type and he always had to walk on eggshells interacting with the few friends he had. His friends were exclusively members of his club, and in some cases they were more of "classmates forced to interact with him" than friends. His best friend among them was probably Kiku, and still Alfred had to be careful what he said next to him because Kiku didn’t quite understand sarcasm.

Arthur, meanwhile, was someone he could be totally comfortable with all the time, even to slightly tease him, and boy, did Alfred liked it. He had never had a friend like that, someone he knew for sure that he wouldn’t easily lose.

The best part was that it wasn’t like Arthur didn’t care about him and consequently didn’t care about whatever he said about him. Arthur legitimately liked his sense of humor and seemed to like Alfred. He was surprisingly attentive to Alfred and had even stopped smoking on the roof because of him. He wasn’t good at directly expressing that he liked Alfred's company, but he always made a visible effort to keep him by his side, which generated genuinely warm feelings in Alfred's chest when he noticed them.

So, duh, of course Alfred wanted to keep seeing him during Summer break. Alfred’s birthday was in a few days! Arthur had to come for his birthday party and it would be so much awkward to suddenly invite him to a party if they didn’t see each other since the last day of school!

Alfred had a lot of plans and expectations for that Summer but the first place he’d invite Arthur to HAD to be a place he already knew: Alfred’s house.

Alfred had already noticed that, despite his wild look, Arthur wasn’t the sort of guy that would like to go out for a ride around the city with no destination. He liked privacy and to be able to simply stand in a corner, talking and enjoying the environment around him, which was perfect for Alfred, since he enjoyed quietness as well. That would be a great headstarter to their Summer.

Now, unlike the other time Arthur had been in his house, this time he would be in Alfred's room. Therefore, Alfred had to do his best to make the place presentable. While he had nothing to hide, he had a LOT of random stuff scattered around. He needed to put it all together and order it a bit so Arthur would find the place clean and spacious. It turned out that was a good thing, since In the middle of his cleaning, he found some stuff that he wanted to show Arthur during his visit, like a cool, very retro old game.

Arthur arrived punctually at two in the afternoon, precisely at the time they had scheduled. That was how Arthur rolled.

It had only been a couple of days since Alfred had seen him last and yet he still felt so, so freaking happy to see that frowning and slightly embarrassed familiar face at his door.

Probably due to summer heat, Arthur was wearing just a pair of shorts and a large gray shirt with the symbol of some rock band that Alfred didn’t recognize. He looked very precious dressed in that casual manner.

“I brought some cupcakes.” Arthur said, holding out a paper bag with a pink sticker for Alfred, turning his face slightly to the side. “As a thanks for your invitation.”

“Oh thanks! Awesome!” Alfred replied, opening the package and immediately proceeding to eat its contents. Food gifts should be appreciated on the spot. However … “Urgh, Arthur. These are totally burned and they barely have any cream. Which store sold it? You know, we can go there now to make a complain and exchange them for…”

"… I made those cupcakes." Arthur replied in the most defeated tone Alfred had heard of him until then. It was as if gray clouds were floating around his face while he said it.

Oh shit.

“Uh… Well… !”

How to fix what he said? Teasing Arthur was fun but being rude to him felt terrible! Even though those cupcakes were indeed horrible, they were a gift from Arthur and Alfred felt pretty awful for saying bad things about them right in front of the person who made them.

“Never mind, then! I'm starving, so anything goes! Haha!” Alfred ended up saying, proceeding to eat the cupcakes at an uncontrollably fast pace. He thought that maybe eating them was like pulling on a bandage and the faster, the more painless it would be.

Arthur seemed surprised to see that.

"Are you… still going to eat them? When I mess up the food, people usually don’t…” he muttered very discreetly, practically to himself. Then, his face suddenly lighted up. “Did I got it right this time?” he asked with a hopeful smile.

Not a chance that Alfred could lie so well.

“No, it's totally burned.” Alfred answered honestly as he ate another cupcake. "But I'm hungry and this is a snack, so it's okay with me. I’m kinda glad you tried to cook something for me, you know?”

The truth is, Alfred was not hungry. He had had a very good lunch and those cupcakes weren’t really doing something for his appetite. However, he wanted to eat them – that wasn’t a lie. Because it had been a cool gesture on Arthur's part to prepare and bring some food and also because it was the first time Alfred had received a gift from an omega that wasn’t from his family.

He resigned to just trying to avoiding chewing as much as possible. Urgh, some crumbles could end up stuck in his braces and they would taste so bad. That aside, he was eating one cupcake after another, so voraciously that he got Arthur to smile a little bit.

"You're so hungry. At least be polite and leave some for your family.” he said in an affectionate voice. Well, Alfred thought it would be much more polite of him to make sure his family wouldn’t eat that stuff. "Where are they, by the way? I must greet them.”

"Nah, mom's taking a nap and dad's on a business trip. Relax, okay? It’s just us.” Alfred informed, taking Arthur's arm to bring him inside.

Arthur didn’t relax, though. As they passed by the living room, Arthur looked suspiciously at his arm that Alfred was holding and then all around, as if he expected Alfred's parents to jump out from behind a wall at any moment and shout "What's going on here?!" or something like this.

Arthur was too self-conscious about certain things.

He was like that until they reached Alfred’s room on the second floor.

“Tcha-ran! Welcome to my room! The ideal fortress of any person with good taste!” Alfred announced, presenting his room with literal open arms like a television host showing prizes to competitors in his show.

Alfred's room was very stuffed. He had a single bed, a bedside cabinet, a desk with a computer, a television with three different video games consoles nearby, a telescope by his window, and dozens of dozens of comic books, action figures, scientific journals, and other objects of his interests crammed where they had space to stay.

Nonetheless, since the room was tidy, Arthur was spared from seeing his slightly dirty clothes accumulated on the desk chair for possible reuse and stuff related to his braces set over the headboard mixed with half read comic books, pieces of his old school projects and bags of food.

"Oh, this room practically yells ‘Alfred’.” Arthur commented amused. “It's like I'm getting a tour inside your brain. You have so many toys, especially dolls.”

Alfred didn’t want to be the cliché type that corrects people who called "action figures" dolls. After all, he once went to describe an instrumental song for Arthur and he just managed to say "It's like... pah pah pah! Du-pee-doo!” while Arthur asked “Who is the composer? What are the instruments?" in visible frustration. Each one with their own knowledge. He let that one pass.

“Yeah, I have. Most of them are superheroes but I also have actual robot projects I did in the past.”

“Oh really?” Arthur was intrigued. “Can I see them ?”

Uhhh. It was kind of embarrassing to show Arthur a bunch of unfinished projects that had totally gone wrong. Alfred's old robot projects were like his first social media posts. They were nice personal memories to remind him how much he had evolved over the years but they’re also so embarrassing that he hoped no one else would discover them.

"They're not very impressive.” Alfred tried to dissuade him.

Unfortunately, Arthur was super-good at dissuading Alfred from dissuading him.

"Oh, and you want to impress me?" he asked mockingly. "Oh, my. What does that mean, Alfred Franklin Jones?"

Well, considering that Alfred had tidied up his room for hours that morning just for Arthur's visit, yes, it would be correct to assume that he wanted to impress him a little. Still, Alfred would die of embarrassment if he plainly admitted it.

“Okay, okay, I'll show you.” Alfred gave in, letting his shoulders slump in defeat.

Alfred eventually showed Arthur not only old bits of what should be robots, but also his telescope, his comic books with omega heroes (that Arthur would probably like) and his favorite games.

Arthur had a super-open mind and he gave everything a shot before saying it wasn’t for his tastes, which allowed Alfred to try sharing his interests with him to see if there was something that could be fun for both of them.

In the end, Arthur had no patience for comic books, since all the alternative timelines were too confusing for him and he didn’t like the typical comics art style. He tried to be encouraging about Alfred's robots, though it was kind of clear that inside he was thinking "is this industrial waste?"

Now the telescope and video games had positive results. Arthur loved telescopes. He liked to watch the sky in general and seeing him with a lens that allowed him to observe details that he wouldn’t see with the naked eye was even more fascinating to him. As for games, even if Arthur got zero patience for newer, complex games with multiple commands, he loved the atari-style games that Alfred had. Especially competitive games. They spent most of that afternoon competing in eighties’s race and fighting games.

Arthur was an incredibly fun company to play something. When he was losing, he would start to say a bunch of expressions in English that seemed totally hilarious to Alfred. "Bollocks", "bloody wanker", "prat", "you are all talk and no trousers". Pfft. Alfred had to memorize some of these to use later.

They didn’t even see the time pass by and it was with surprise that Alfred saw his mother come into the room and ask what they would want for dinner.

Arthur seemed even more surprised at how much time had passed, for when Alfred's mother offered dinner, he turned completely red with slightly wide eyes.

"What time is it? God, is it that late already? I didn’t want to stay for so long. Please don’t worry about dinner for me. I'm going home now.” he said, getting up, patting and fixing his own clothes, ready to leave.

“Hey, stay some more!” Alfred tried to stop him, getting up too and grabbing him by the sleeve of his shirt. “My mom cooks super-well and we can leave you at home later!”

Arthur shook his head to the sides, very serious.

"I really don’t want to be a bother, Alfred. I'm going home.”

It was to no avail that Alfred argued that his presence during dinner would be no bother at all. Arthur acted as if Alfred were a child who did not understand that adults need to go out to work, and left, ignoring Alfred's pout and his complaints.

Oh well. They would have other nice days ahead, anyway.

 

* * *

 

It became incredibly common for Arthur to come to Alfred's house at least three times a week, play video games, talk and watch horror movies (another compatibility in their tastes they found out).

He used to come in the afternoon and stay until dinnertime but gradually, thanks to the insistence of Alfred and his mother, who was clearly realizing that Arthur was as much of a nerd as her son, Arthur started to stay for dinner and on a certain night, he even agreed to sleep there, to Alfred’s immense joy.

"You're so excited about this." Arthur smirked, sitting on Alfred's bed as Alfred hummed a song and put a inflatable bed next to it on the ground. "Is this your first time sleeping with an omega?"

Wow, what a clever innuendo. Clap, clap, clap.

Alfred rolled his eyes.

"I'm going to hide stones on your bed if you don’t stop with the dirty jokes."

"You would never do that. You like me too much.” Arthur said with a smile and a distant look and honestly? Alfred didn’t know if he was joking about it or not.

"I wouldn’t say ‘too much’. Just the right amount.” Alfred replied, taking a pillow off his own bed to improve the comfort of Arthur’s. As an omega, Arthur was much more in need of soft things. "I don’t go around beating up the alphas that are interested in you or call you all the time, or anything like that.”

Arthur let out a somewhat dry, low chuckle.

"You know ... I think you like me much more than these alphas who beat up each other for my sake do." he said, swinging his legs out of the bed and lowering his eyes to the ground. "They want me. That doesn’t mean they like me. They barely know me and, most importantly, they don’t respect my decision about who I like or not. They keep fighting as if that’s their business, not mine. A person who disregards the desires and decisions of someone they claim to like doesn’t really like that person, don’t you agree?”

Oh. How curious. Alfred didn’t like being unpopular and Arthur had the opposite problem, yet somehow, he could understand what Arthur was feeling. It should be hard having feelings and opinions ignored or overlooked by people who claimed to like you.

How sad to think that Arthur, who was so unique and so independent of labels, always got to be treated as an "omega" above being treated as a person.

"You'll find someone better for you one day." Alfred tried to say to comfort him. "Or become strong enough to beat them all at once." he added with a playful smile

Arthur laughed and lay on his stomach on Alfred's bed, leaving their eyes on the same height.

“The second option would be better. This way, I could protect you when they inevitably start chasing you after finding out that we're sleeping together.” Arthur answered with a huge smile.

Alfred threw a pillow at Arthur. Freaking jerk and his dirty meaningless jokes.

 

* * *

 

Arthur's summer that year was the best summer he’ve had in a long time.

He was spending a lot of time with Alfred and he was quickly figuring out being with Alfred was always fun, no matter what they were doing. Even when Alfred's mother started to asked them for help with some tasks, Alfred still found a way for them to have fun doing them.

Once, he stopped in front of a gas station to refuel after they got some groceries and, to Arthur's astonishment, he got out of the car and out of nowhere, began to imitate the movements of the arms of the balloon men they had there. It was really an incredible scene. Arthur laughed so hard that he may cried a little.

Alfred's birthday was an interesting event as well. There were several members of his family over there and that made Arthur uneasy. Despite that, Arthur was clearly the focus of the birthday boy attentions. Alfred spent the whole time offering food to him, seeing how he was and trying to dodge quickly from conversations with his relatives to talk to him instead.

All that made Arthur feel ridiculously happy.

But… maybe it was the summer heat that was getting to him but… Recently, even if Arthur felt comfortable and happy with Alfred's presence, he was also becoming increasingly agitated around him. On the nights when he slept in Alfred's house, wearing Alfred’s pajamas because, of course, they never planned anything right, Arthur could barely turn off his brain. Alfred's scent wasn’t particularly strong and yet it had something that made Arthur's cheeks warm and his heart race. Arthur felt so exposed lying close to him, wearing his clothes and sighing because of his smell. It was almost as if he was doing something forbidden.

He felt a bit nervous close to Alfred but that wasn’t a bad feeling. This didn’t make Arthur want to distance from him, not even the slightest. Weirdly enough, feeling this way only made him crave more of Alfred’s company. Lately, he wanted Alfred’s attention so badly. Not only he wanted to know Alfred better but he also (especially) wanted Alfred to be interested about him as well.

Which is why he made Alfred an invitation to go to his secret place where he usually went during summers.

Alfred, that some months ago didn’t even want Arthur to know his name, gladly accepted this invitation, filling Arthur's heart with a warm, fulfilling feeling.

 

* * *

When Alfred received an invitation to go to Arthur's secret place, he thought "dude, I'm totally in."

A secret place sounded like a typical movie thing! That was so cool! He had high expectations of what he would see. A tree house in a forest? A gazebo where you could see the stars better than anywhere in the city?

Or maybe a lake in the middle of a half-abandoned park, that had a suspect greenish-green color, some suspicious bubbles, a slightly unpleasant smell and a very clear "CONTAMINATED WATER, DO NOT CONSUME" sign.

Urgh, really?

The accusing look he gave Arthur must have properly communicated his feelings because Arthur shrugged and said,

"For a place to be really secret, there has to be something that keeps people from coming to it.”

That made sense. Meh.

Arthur sat on the pier of the lake, legs crossed. Alfred sat beside him. They were careful not to let their legs hang near the water so that there would be no risk of them touching it.

"So ... How did you find this place?" Alfred asked.

"When I moved here, I had to look for new things to do, so I explored this city a lot.” Arthur explained. “I remember that when I started coming here a few years ago, people were still swimming in this lake. It was actually a well-visited place. Then, a child got hospitalized for drinking the water and they found out that it had a number of chemicals that made it unfit for consumption. The general theory is that this comes from a cleaning products factory that is close to here, but you know how it is. It is easier to forbid people to come to the lake than to close a factory.”

“Wait, so the contaminated water is polluted by cleaning products?” Alfred asked with a huge smirk, delighted by the irony in that situation. "Doesn’t that mean the water is extra-clean, Artie? We should take a dip in it.”

“Shut up.” Arthur rolled his eyes, shoving Alfred on the shoulder. "You’re smart. You know that's not how chemistry works. Though, honestly, this water isn’t a pool of acid. If you fall into it, you won’t die. I just wouldn’t recommend you to swim around on it like a fool.”

"Hey, tell me. Why do you like it here?" Alfred checked. After all, Arthur had just told a story about a child going to the hospital because of that lake.

"Well, I like watching the water.” Arthur admitted a little shy. “I like to see the tree leaves falling on it and… Well, no one ever comes here, so it's a nice place to practice guitar. Y-You can also bring something to listen music as loud as you want, which is good! And… Also, uh, animals show up every once in awhile! Especially birds!”

Arthur seemed almost guilty, explaining why he liked that place, as if perhaps his justifications weren’t enough to explain why he had brought Alfred to a contaminated lake. He was beginning to stutter, trying to think of more and more things to say to defend his secret place for Alfred. Obviously, it had a enormous value to him.

"Arthur, this place is very much like you: it’s cool and I like it.” Alfred reassured him, placing his hand over Arthur's hand.

Arthur's eyes widened slightly and he seemed to freeze for a moment, before turning his face to Alfred practically in slow motion. His scent changed and became much stronger and sweeter. It felt like mint, that kind of smell that really comes deep into you when you inhale it.

It was only for a second, however, and his scent soon became subtler again, though not the same as always.

His reaction kinda made Alfred want to go a little further to see if he would get more interesting responses. Alfred intertwined his fingers, squeezing Arthur's hand a little. He did manage to obtain a response, though he didn’t know whether it was a positive one or not, considering that Arthur turned his face away from him and partially covered his own face with his free hand.

"Let's stay here until nightfall to see if any fireflies appear." Alfred suggested, observing Arthur and trying to see if he was bothered with their current position. He didn’t mind backing off if Arthur was uncomfortable.

"Yeah, okay, yes…" Arthur muttered, still avoiding eye contact with Alfred while not making any move to remove his hand from him. "We can do that.”

Alfred gave him a satisfied smile. Apparently, it was all good.

"Now, tell me about some of the memories you have of this place!” Alfred happily asked, staring at the lake and watching the leaves moving over the water, like Arthur said he liked to do.

 

* * *

 

Arthur Kirkland has never felt so weak in his entire life.

It’s important to mention that once he had been thrown violently against the wall by an alpha that was pure muscles and testosterone, had to run away from a bunch of college alphas who had trouble with his attitude, and was punched in the face by the brother of another omega who thought that Arthur had seduced his boyfriend. And in all these situations, Arthur's attitude was "come at me, I can take it". He was always ready to protect himself. If he had to be beaten up, well, he would get beaten up. In the end, he always thought he could handle everything.

Now, ironically, what was making Arthur completely vulnerable and powerless was to hear Alfred's voice, the less intimidating alpha he had ever known in his life, asking him questions about his memories and his tastes, with legitimate interest, holding his hand and occasionally playing with it.

… Good lord.

Arthur didn’t understand why he was feeling as if he could melt when Alfred looked directly into his eyes and showed him that metallic shiny smile. It was so strange. Very, very strange.

Still, that was no big deal. Arthur was just… bad at dealing with friendships.

He couldn’t let Alfred find out how he was feeling. If he noticed, he would get it all wrong.

Just a little more, he had to endure it just a little more. It was already sunset. Soon they would be back home, Alfred would release his hand and Arthur would be able to breathe normally again.

"You mean you composed music around here? This is cool. What songs have you composed inspired by this place?” Alfred asked him casually, unaware that a countdown was taking place in Arthur's mind.

“I made a bunch of different songs here. They’re not related to the place, really. Except for one I made called ‘The place I go to smoke’.” Arthur answered bluntly.

"Oh, I wonder what the inspiration for that title was.” Alfred laughed and damn, his laughter made Arthur feel like butterflies were released in his chest. "You know, even though you say you were smoking here, I don’t see any trash around, much less cigarettes. Suspiiiiiicious.”

"I always clean everything when I come here.” Arthur explained, snorting. “What kind of arsehole would leave garbage thrown around in 2016?”

“You know what? You would be a great example for children, Arthur Kirkland.” Alfred leaned close to his shoulder with a provocative smile and Arthur felt the hair on the back of his neck stand.

"Says the bloke who study science as a hobby." he tried to give Alfred his usual type of answer.

At that point, all he was thinking about was that he had to act normally. Dear god, he had to act normally. The night was already falling. The sky was in a beautiful lilac tone, the cicadas had begun to sing. They would soon return to normal positions and Arthur would be able to act normally and just forget about this whole deal… If he endured it just a bit more, he would be able to pretend nothing ever happened.

“Alfred, have you ever kissed someone?”

Unfortunately, brain, heart and mouth don’t always come to terms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, guys!!!
> 
> I'm glad to bring this new chapter to you! Honestly, all the support I'm receiving makes me so much more dedicated to do my best in this story and make plans for future omegaverse stories! Thank you all very much. Honestly, you are pretty awesome and I'm truly grateful about the feedback in this story. 
> 
> My special thanks to EmpressVegah, lunnym, Rubythroated, Skylakur, Ixiepixie, DiurnalDays, Misscherrysyrup, keerigen, NightWings_Nightingale, Lunar_Iris, Rosiecat23, Windfeather and AwesomeTomatoBoom for leaving kudos and all the guests who did the same!
> 
> Also, my special thanks to all the people who left reviews! I already answered those!=)
> 
> PS: I'm aware that canon Arthur is good at baking but this Arthur isn't. 
> 
> If you liked this chapter, please let me know your favorite parts and your feelings about it! I will be answering all the reviews i get so don't hesitate to send me your questions and thoughts!^_^
> 
> Byeee


	4. Strangers?

He had done it.

He had actually asked the question, and judging by the confused and somewhat horrified glance Alfred was throwing at him, he had evidently heard it. All Arthur could do now was act normally, trying to not put much meaning into that question. In the worst case scenery, he could just play it cool and act like Alfred was taking things too seriously.

Which would be a somewhat amusing solution to the situation, considering that Arthur Kirkland was taking it all so seriously that he felt he was about to have a heart attack.

“What? I'm not asking your favorite sexual position or anything. I'm just asking if you ever kissed someone,” Arthur tried to smile teasingly at Alfred, but his self-awareness intervened, causing him to look away.

At that moment, he noticed that, despite the awkward situation, Alfred's hand was still over his, and that simultaneously reassured him a bit and made him even more agitated inside.

“I-I know but that came outta nowhere!” Alfred snapped, his voice slightly louder than usual. “Excuse me if I wasn’t ready to talk about this when we were previously talking about the fact that you throw your trash in the trash can!”

Eh, he had a point. Arthur wasn’t ready for that question either. It simply left his mouth as if he had coughed it. However, now that he had said it, he was waiting for an answer.

“Right, right. I get it. It was sudden,” he said, without a drop of interest in keeping debating how they had come to that subject instead of discussing the subject itself. "Anyway, have you ever kissed anyone?"

The long silence that followed that question made Arthur raise his eyes in curiosity. He saw Alfred curl up, hugging his knees with his free arm, his face turned towards the lake. It was a little dark and it wasn’t possible to see his expression, so Arthur had to pay attention to other signs to see what he was feeling. Alfred's scent was filled with anxiety, and his voice sounded timid and hesitant when he admitted:

"No, I've never kissed anyone…”

Oh.

"Surprising, right?" Alfred added sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

He had made that point in self-deprecating humor, but that sounded, indeed, a bit surprising to Arthur. Especially because Alfred’s shy appearance at that moment really did look good on him. The thought that no one tried to feel Alfred's lips against theirs, that no one had tried to hold his cheeks and bring him closer and closer to them... That was almost unbelievable.

Just by looking at him now, Arthur was feeling extremely compelled to kiss him.

“Uh... Not even a quick peck on the lips?” Arthur asked curiously.

"Maybe from my parents when I was a baby, but that's all." Alfred replied, still with his body shrunk.

Hearing this, Arthur felt a complicated mixture of feelings bubble up in his chest and a series of mental images poped involuntarily in his thoughts, since he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to kiss Alfred at that moment.

They were in a secluded place, with only the faint illumination of the park behind them and the stars above their heads... Alfred's hand was still over his. The atmosphere seemed appropriate. How would Alfred react if he kissed him? Would he blush? Would he enjoy it? Would he ask to do it again?

Arthur had no idea where these ideas were coming from. The person he was cogitating to snog was _Alfred_. It wasn’t like Arthur was overloaded with pheromones because of him. He didn’t even had a strong smell.

Even so, his usually only friendly affection for Alfred began to be stirred with curiosity and a strong need to touch him.

"If you want to test it out, I can kiss you," he blurted, feeling his heart racing as he said those words.

Unfortunately, Alfred didn’t react as he expected.

He took off his hand and turned to Arthur with a vaguely irritated expression.

Oh, shit. That was really, really bad…

"Arthur, can you stop with these lewd jokes? It’s getting pretty annoying.” Alfred complained, with a stern, cold look in Arthur's direction.

Those words came like a punch on the face, making Arthur wake up to reality and get out of the haze of daydreams in which he had been before. He became extremely conscious of the fact that he had said something strange and Alfred hadn’t liked it at all.

Bloody fucking hell. Oh, fuck. Oh, shit. He wasn’t expecting that answer. He thought Alfred would be embarrassed, perhaps a little hesitant, not that he would be annoyed with his suggestion!

Arthur's brain went on emergency mode. What could he do? What could he do? How could he get out of that situation with his pride intact? Clearly, he couldn’t admit that he was completely serious and that he had really contemplated kissing Alfred for a moment.

Desperate for a solution and feeling all his layers of interpersonal defenses rise above him, Arthur began to say a bunch of things without thinking straight:

"I was serious though! I mean, you probably wouldn’t have another chance to kiss an omega and I wouldn’t bother doing you a favour," he said quickly, forcing a casual air upon himself. He felt his throat dry. "It's nothing serious, really. You don’t even count as an alpha to me. I wouldn’t mind kissing you. Anyway, don’t be so affected by little things. It looks bad on you.” Arthur forced a careless laugh.

Those words came out of Arthur's mouth when his only priority was ‘don’t let him notice your expectations, don’t let him realize you want it.’ He didn’t pause for a second to consider how they might sound or whether there was any chance they would hurt Alfred.

Unfortunately, he realized too late that maybe he shouldn’t have said any of these things. When he rose his eyes to Alfred, after a long, strange silence on his part, Alfred was staring at him as if he'd tried to hug Arthur and got punched in the stomach. That betrayed, hurt and disappointed look... God, seeing it made Arthur feel awful as well. Alfred’s scent took on a bitter nuance that Arthur had never felt before. It was hard to even breath it.

Arthur Kirkland had screwed up.

He wanted to try to correct himself, say that it wasn’t what he meant, that he wasn’t being entirely honest. However, he was terrified that he would irrevocably make things worse if he didn’t think straight about what he would say next, and he ended up opening and closing his mouth multiple times, without saying a single word.

Alfred opened his mouth to say something first and Arthur had to bite his lower lip to contain himself and not say anything impulsively to him first. It would be fair if Alfred said some harsh words to him. Still, the idea of hearing an offense coming from him seemed more painful than Arthur could handle and Arthur felt himself bristling and retreating like a frightened animal, while mentally preparing for them.

“Let's go home? It's getting late.” Alfred suggested in a much softer tone than Arthur expected, standing up and putting his hands in his pockets.

He asked it as normally as possible, as if nothing had happened, even though his scent and his somewhat broken voice revealed that things were not normal at all.

Oh damn. So Alfred was a passive-aggressive alpha when he was angry. Of course he was.

Arthur still said something like "Alfred, listen...", trying to at least give them an opening so they could talk about it and he could apologize, even if he still didn’t know what he could say after offending Alfred, but Alfred pretended that he didn’t hear him and began to walk away from the lake. Apparently that conversation was over for him.

Arthur didn’t want to be left behind. He got up and followed Alfred, trying to stay near to him, but feeling that Alfred always hastened his pace a bit when he got too close.

After months of progress, he again had to follow Alfred's back in the distance.

He couldn’t deny that it was all his fault and that made everything so much worse. Arthur was used to being the one to get disappointed at people, not the one who disappoint others. He truly didn’t know how to handle it.

How could Arthur explain himself so that Alfred did not get angry? If he tried to explain himself in his present emotional state, he would reveal too much. Maybe Alfred would read too much into it and… and, honestly, the consequences of it terrified Arthur.

Alfred's annoyed expression when Arthur offered to kiss him would appear in his thoughts every couple of seconds and make him hold his tongue, instead of acting to remedy the situation.

So when Alfred wanted to part with him in the middle of the road, instead of letting Arthur take him home as usual, Arthur couldn’t say anything about that. He wouldn’t have the courage to be confronted by Alfred, so he didn’t want to take the risk of confronting Alfred as well. Maybe it was better to leave that conversation for another day anyway. With any luck, Alfred might even forget about it altogether and they might ignore what had happened and their friendship wouldn’t change because of that.

Arthur would give it some time. Everything would be okay at the end. It had to.

Despite repeating this to himself, as he walked the way back home seemed longer than ever before and the night seemed strangely cold, considering it was summer.

 

* * *

  
  
Alfred Franklin Jones didn’t consider himself particularly a rancorous or angry person in general. Not because he had reached a state of emotional maturity or an enviable inner peace mind set, but merely because he had no will to waste being angry all the time.

When someone did something terrible to him, he didn’t feel much beyond silent contempt and a certain pessimistic sense of ‘well, that was expected’. He didn’t have the time or energy to be reminiscing about bad memories and thinking of revenge plans.

His reaction to what Artie had said to him on that summer night, therefore, surprised him.

He didn’t understand how or why but Arthur's words activated something inside him. It was as if his blood had boiled. He felt so upset that he couldn’t even turn that into a snarky remark towards Arthur or anything of the sort. He just went straight to the point and told them to go home. He barely managed to properly react and express what he was feeling.

In those situations, generally, he would have thought to himself, ‘wow, what a stupid-ass thing to say’, and maybe even say it out loud because sometimes he wasn’t able to contain himself, but he would hardly let it end a conversation.

However, he was feeling so, so angry at that time that he couldn’t stand to stay by Arthur's side long enough for them to even reach his house. He left Arthur in the middle of the street and marched back home in rage, keeping his eyes firmly on the ground, as if he would see Arthur’s face at any time if he raised them.

Curiously, his fury passed away as soon as he got home. He went through the door, closed it, pressed his back against it, took a deep breath a few times, and... Poof! It was like ice falling into a hot frying pan. It suddenly evaporated. That earlier agitation he had been feeling was more of a physical reaction than anything rational, so it made sense that it would vanish like that. It was simply the result of his alpha hormones coming on the scene.

The problem is that after he calmed down, Alfred became fully aware of the fact that he had done a whole scene in front of Arthur just because he had said Alfred didn’t count as alpha to him.

That seemed so overdramatic now. Alfred usually wouldn’t even get annoyed with what Arthur had said, in the first place… right? ‘You don’t count as an alpha’ was a phrase he heard from practically everyone, including family members and friends from his club. Besides, Alfred and Arthur had always teased each other just to play around and that was fun and a very unique part of their relationship.

The truth is, Alfred probably would have taken Arthur's remark better if it had been a bad joke. What really frustrated him was knowing Arthur was not kidding. That he had said it genuinely.

... Which, again, shouldn’t be a problem now that he thought better of it. After all, many of the people who said similar things to him were definitely not joking and some even meant it as a compliment.

However, for some reason, the fact that he had heard from Arthur that he didn’t count as alpha, that Arthur wouldn’t even mind kissing him because of this, had affected him more than that would have affected him had this been said by any other person. Thinking about the implications of this really worried Alfred.

He didn’t understand why he had felt so bothered at the time. Even now that he was no longer angry and didn’t feel upset with Arthur, he still felt immensely frustrated by remembering what Arthur had said.

Undoubtedly, he had to confront Arthur and himself in order to figure that stuff out. And you know what alphas like Alfred did when there was a situation that demanded confrontation?

Run away. Run away from anything that might cause him to have to deal with it. Just bury his feelings and thoughts about the subject in a box deep in his consciousness.

 

* * *

 

Arthur soon learned that Alfred didn’t know how to be subtle even when he wanted to seem invisible to someone.

It was so freaking obvious that he was avoiding him.

In the last days of summer, he didn’t contact Arthur, which was certainly disappointing. Still, that was something that, at least, Arthur could (try to) ignore. He could lie to himself and try to convince himself that Alfred was just busy. Not contacting him didn’t necessarily mean Alfred was avoiding him.

Of course, Arthur could easily figure it out if he tried to contact Alfred on his own, but good lord, no. There was no bloody way that he would do something that risky.

It was only when autumn came and classes returned that Arthur realized that Alfred was literally running away from him.

It was more than not going to the places where Arthur usually went to. That much could be dismissed as coincidence. However…

If the two of them were in the same hallway, Alfred would quickly find a way into the closest classroom possible.

If he had to pass by Arthur in his way back home, he would do it with his eyes firmly directed to the ground, pretending (badly) that he wasn’t seeing him, even if that made it extremely obvious that he was aware of Arthur's presence there.

The signs were ridiculously obvious, but it took time for Arthur to take any action about it, because he also had his motives to pretend he wasn’t noticing what was happening.

Arthur wanted to pretend until the last second that everything was a coincidence, that he was overthinking, despite it seeming increasingly more unlikely.

The problem was that with each passing day, it was harder to fake that everything was okay and there came a point where Arthur had to get a definite answer about whether he was being avoided or not.

Arthur decided to get to school sooner than usual and wait next to Alfred's locker. That guy would have to go there to get his materials for his first class. There was no chance he wouldn’t be there.

And indeed, Alfred had to go there. Seeing Arthur close to his locker, his eyes grew a little wide. It seemed he had seen a ghost, honestly. It was a little sad that even being looked at like that felt so much better than never having Alfred's eyes on him.

Alfred, though paralyzed at first, reluctantly walked to his locker. As they stood face to face, Arthur raised his hand in greeting, smiling and saying "Hey, Al!" In the most casual tone possible.

Then, Alfred opened his locker, letting the door block his view of Arthur, during the remarkably short time he spent gathering his stuff, and left without a word.

Unbelievable. Just… Unbelievable.

Honestly, Arthur didn’t think he deserved that sort of treatment! Okay, it had been kind of rude of him to say that Alfred didn’t count as an alpha, but did Alfred need to get _that_ offended with such a small offense? What the fuck was that?

Well, screw that, then! It wasn’t as if Arthur needed him for anything. If Alfred would ignore him, Arthur would ignore him back.

That was his plan, and from the outside everything seemed to be working. He continued his old routine before he met Alfred. Hanging out at the school roof, talking to the other punk guys he knew, smoking and rejecting the idiot alphas who tried to convince him to shag them. Some of the members of his group asked what had happened to him in the previous months and where his new friend had gone. Arthur just shrugged at them, giving sarcastic, bitter answers. ‘Why would I know that? I'm not his fucking nanny,’ he would tell them. Anyone who saw Arthur could tell that he looked like his old self again.

The problem is, on the inside, Arthur was definitely not ignoring Alfred. Oh no. Quite the contrary. He was thinking about Alfred this whole time. It was ridiculous. He would often go to sleep remembering their moments together and wake up in the next morning thinking ‘Will Alfred still be upset today?’.

He couldn’t even hear the name 'Alfred', without feeling his heart start to jump around.

He didn’t understand that. He couldn’t possibly understand. What the hell. He hadn’t spoken to the bloke in weeks. Why was he still often in his mind? The distance should have made them grow apart, right? So why Arthur’s feelings towards Alfred seemed to be getting stronger and more painful at each day?

The longer Arthur passed away from Alfred, the more his heart ached to remember him. He began comparing Alfred to the alphas around him, trying to understand at least a little because what he felt about Alfred was so different from what he felt for other alphas, trying to understand why he missed Alfred in a way he never missed other alphas in his life.

Rationally speaking, Alfred wasn’t the strongest, most experienced or most imposing of the alphas. He was awkward, shy, and could talk too much at certain times. He was unbelievably tall without the muscles to compensate for it, and the combination of his glasses and braces gave him the appearance of a two dimensional movie character whose director wanted the audience to see as a stereotypical nerd.

Still, Arthur had to admit it to himself, Alfred was… rather attractive.

He didn’t have a conventional beauty, but maybe that was what was so interesting about him. His charms resided in points that generally didn’t even brought attention in other alphas. He had incredibly striking and expressive eyes, with a blue color as pure as the sea around a deserted island. His sincere smile was discreet, but captivating and being able to see it was almost like finding a diamond in the rough. His cheekbones looked so good too. From some angles, he looked incredibly handsome in Arthur's eyes.

His large hands and their height difference sometimes made Arthur wonder how would it be if...

Okay, maybe this analysis was starting to get _a bit_ farther from the original point. He was previously analyzing why his friendship with Alfred was different from the ones he had with his other alphas friends. How… How did his thoughts went in that strange direction?

Perhaps that was... because his fight with Alfred had been precisely because he'd said Alfred did not count as an alpha for him. And that was wrong. Completely wrong.

It was almost unbearable how much Alfred counted as an alpha to him. Arthur was incredibly aware of his scent and he dearly missed to feel it close to him. Not to mention how pathetically clumsy Arthur got around Alfred, especially when he remembered the fact that his friend was an alpha. He had other alpha friends but only Alfred made him feel like that.

Then, one day, thinking again about it, Arthur finally let his mind consider the following answer to all the questions in his mind…

‘What if you're liking him?’

That thought hit him with the intensity of lightning, making Arthur choke on the smoke from his cigarette and turn completely red. He was with some friends on the roof at the time, and they were pretty confused by what the hell had happened. They asked if Arthur was all right and, frankly, Arthur wondered that too.

What the hell had he just thought? He? Liking Alfred?? HAHA! He, liking Alfred!

…

He… Liking… Alfred…

“Oh, bollocks.”

 

* * *

 

Alfred missed Arthur very, very badly.

He didn’t know when he got so attached to Artie, but damn. Not being able to talk to him sucked.

Alfred had his club mates with whom to spend his time and talk, and yet he felt rather lonely without Arthur. Whenever he found something cool, his first thought was ‘Dude, I need to show this to Arthur!’, followed by ‘Oh, yeah... We're not talking.’

He missed talking to Arthur at the school roof and walking back home with him. Damn, just spending time with him in general…

The problem was that Alfred was scared. About a number of things.

First, he had impulsively decided that he would no longer talk to Arthur because he was afraid of what it meant for him to be so angry at the fact that Arthur didn’t consider him an alpha. Then, over a couple of months, this fear became subdued and, in its place, came the fear of how Arthur would react if Alfred tried to talk to him again after all that time.

What should Alfred say to him in the first place? Should he apologize? Demand a apology himself? Act like nothing ever happened? He felt his head spinning whenever he thought about it.

Alfred didn’t even know if Arthur still remembered or cared about him. He had gone back to walking with his old group and, from his scent, it was noticeable he had gone back to smoking frequently.

He didn’t lose any time, huh? Maybe that was the best lifestyle for him. Walking with someone like Alfred might have been kind of lame for him. Alfred still could not understand why he had done it.

In one way or another, avoiding confrontations with Arthur or with the deep feelings on his chest, Alfred followed with his life as well.

Near Halloween, in anticipation for the release of a bunch of indie horror games, Alfred started planning a sleepover at his house with Kiku.

Kiku didn’t seem excited about the sleepover, though. He thought Alfred was too noisy while playing horror games. Also, he wasn’t a fan of games with gore or jumpscares. He liked long, subtle horror games with a suspenseful build up… You know, those kind of games which Alfred particularly found really boring.

Still, Kiku would be his guest at his Halloween party because, since he had stopped talking with Arthur, Alfred had no other friend  to play video games with and Kiku seemed to pity him a bit.

On the 31st, Alfred's plan was to go straight home after class to wait for Kiku there, since he would still have piano lessons that afternoon. However, he found a note left in his locker during lunch break that read ‘Can you meet me at your club room after class? We have to talk’ that forced his plans to change.

‘His’ club, huh? Kiku probably needed some favor, then. He only pulled out the ‘you’re the leader of our club’ card when he wanted something.

It was kind of archaic for Kiku to put a message in his locker instead of just sending him a text, but oh well, maybe his battery died or something. Alfred didn’t put too much thought into it.

He went after class to get the key to the club room in the teachers' room and went straight there after that.

Before he got into the the club room, he noticed that something wasn’t right. The door to the room was unlocked. It could not haven’t been Kiku who opened it because Alfred had just picked up the only key that gave him access to that place. So who in the world...?

Hesitantly, Alfred opened a small crack in the door, sliding his head in to see if anyone was there or if the members of his club had simply forgotten to close the door.

His gaze then met Arthur Kirkland's. He was sitting on one of the tables, with his legs crossed, and looking absolutely nonchalant, despite having invaded Alfred's club room.

Alfred was so shocked at that sight that his first instinct was simply to let go of the door, letting it get open and murmuring to himself:

"But you shouldn’t be here..."

Arthur cleared his throat and quickly fixed his clothes before getting off the table and starting to walk towards Alfred.

“Look, Alfred. We need to talk.”

‘We need to talk’ is a phrase that will always sound ominous, even without a context that justifies it. In Alfred's case, he had an idea of why he was listening to this and that only made things worse. He felt his survival instincts being activated immediately, as if that sentence was a voice command for his ‘fight or flight’ reflex.

His reaction was to try to flight, of course, but his goddamn freakish long legs didn’t cooperate when he needed them the most and he ended up stumbling on his own feet and almost falling face down on the floor. Arthur, seeing this, hurried toward him and held him by the collar, which strangled him a little, but prevented him from ending up with a broken nose.

Alfred rested his palms on the floor, regaining his balance, and Arthur stopped pulling so strongly on his collar, but he kept holding it on.

Arthur, who was now breathing deeply, calming himself down, placed a hand over his own chest.

"Honestly, Alfred, I feel like one day, my heart won’t be able to handle the things you cause to it. In many ways.”

Oh gosh. Oh gosh. Arthur was talking to him. Directly to him. And holding his collar. He could not run. What could he do, then?!

"Listen... I won’t let you run away this time." Arthur said in a voice that sounded insecure, despite also sounding earnest in its determination. “We need to talk. Seriously.”

Alfred sighed deeply. Well... He missed Arthur. Besides, it was Arthur who took the initiative to try to talk to him. Maybe it wouldn’t really hurt to just listen to what he had to say.

“Okay…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, guys!!!
> 
> I'm glad to bring this new chapter to you! It took me a bit of time to write it because I was busy with the organization of the usukustwiceperyearevent! I hope you all understand! 
> 
> The support I'm getting in this story is truly the most amazing one I got in this fandom and I have no words to describe how grateful I am for every review, every kudo and every reader that I got for this. I truly hope I can keep receiving your support since there's no greater gift for a writer. 
> 
> My special thanks to Valkyrja, tinysnowflakes89, BrattyAmericat, startingfromtoday, Milkbath, RibbonsFancy, irlkiragi, decoris, Sadaf_Awesome, DestinyWaffle, TheWolfPlayedTheCello23, planxtary, MaddieC and angeloftheassbutt for leaving kudos and all the guests who did the same!
> 
> Also, my special thanks to all the people who left reviews! I already answered those!
> 
> If you liked this chapter, please let me know your favorite parts and your feelings about it! I will be answering all the reviews I get so don't hesitate to send me your questions and thoughts!^_^
> 
> Byeee


	5. Boyfriends(part. 01)

They entered the club room and Arthur sat on one of the tables again. Alfred, in turn, took a chair, which gave him a good view of Arthur's face so he could look at him judgmentally for sitting on the table. Arthur didn’t seem to notice it.

“Very well,” Arthur began the conversation in the same tone as a judge starting a trial. "Since I dragged you here, I'll let you say whatever you want to say first."

He probably had good intentions by letting Alfred be the first to speak, but that was not a good idea because Alfred had no idea what to say. All he managed to say was:

“Did you break into my club room?”

Arthur chuckled. He seemed rather pleased with himself.

"It was the most private place to talk to you that I could think of. Besides, you deserved it for ignoring me like a dick.”

Did he deserve this? Well, maybe a little. Just a little. The main culprit of everything was still Arthur. Alfred only acted the way he did for self-preservation reasons. What was Arthur's excuse to being a dick?

Alfred had nothing else to say and only gave him a disapproving grunt as a response. Noticing his silence, Arthur started making his own questions:

“Are you upset with me?” he frowned “Your smell indicates that you are, but... Smells are stupid. I want to hear it from your mouth.”

Alfred ran his tongue over his braces absently, his eyes on the floor. He didn’t feel like he would be able to say anything to Arthur. He had a bunch of stuff that he could take off his chest but should he really do it? Alfred was not the type to deal well with confrontations. Avoidance was usually the safest option for him to continue living his life without unnecessary worries.

If he left Arthur complaining on his own, eventually he would get tired, right? So was even worth it to start a discussion?  

"If you're upset with me," Arthur said in a voice that sounded legitimately hurt, "can you at least have the guts to say it in my face? You're an alpha!”

"So now I'm an alpha," Alfred ended up answering, sardonic.

Oh, crap. His brilliant self-preservation plan went down in seconds because of his freaking smartass tongue that had a life on its own.

Now, Arthur was emanating victory from every pore of his body.

"Well, that answers two of my questions,” he smirked, almost glowing of pride with himself. “The one that I already asked and one that I was going to ask next. You're upset and, as I suspected, it’s because of the comment I made that day by the lake.”

Arthur looked so pleased with himself. He seemed to be feeling as if he was Sherlock Holmes himself.

“Congratulations on noticing the obvious. Are you happy now? Do you want a prize?” Alfred snapped at him.

Ahh, damn it. He didn’t want to say something that could start a fight. He was just very volatile at that moment. For some reason, he still felt rage bubbling inside him as he thought of what Arthur had said that summer night. That's ridiculous. Seriously, why? Why was he still so annoyed with that?

Arthur, now, looked hurt and vulnerable. Despite being pretty tough, he had a very sensitive side that Alfred was aware of.

Regardless of his own anger, Alfred didn’t like to see Arthur down and let alone be the one responsible for it. He bit his lower lip, feeling kinda bad for being rude to Arthur but unable to find the words to fix the situation.

"No... Listen, Alfred, this is not about me trying to convince you that I was right..." Arthur muttered, crossing his arms over his chest and looking away, awkwardly. "Alfred, I... I'm really sorry ... you know ... for that night,” he admitted in a hesitant voice, “I wasn’t thinking straight...“

Alfred took a deep breath. As much as he wanted to fully accept that apology, he couldn’t do it. Even though Arthur was apologetic, it was frustrating to think that he was only saying that now because Alfred got upset, not because Arthur had changed his mind about what he had said previously.

“It’s pretty obvious that you weren’t thinking straight.”  Alfred scoffed, “After all, you offered to kiss me. _Clearly,_ you were completely out of your mind”, he added bitterly. That was probably not the best way to deal with the situation, but at that point, he was just letting his feelings get out.

"No, Alfred..." Arthur said in a low voice, and to Alfred's surprise, his scent changed suddenly.

It had turned into something vaguely sweet and a little stirring, making Alfred's heart instinctively speed up in reaction to it.

"It’s not _that_ part that I regret ..." Arthur informed him and Alfred arched an eyebrow, puzzled and surprised. "I ... I do regret saying that I didn’t see you as an alpha but ..."

Suddenly Arthur lifted his face, making their eyes meet. It felt almost like they bumped. There was so much force and determination in the way Arthur was looking at him that Alfred felt as if Arthur's eyes were pushing him against the wall.

"... I-I don’t regret proposing that we kissed!" he firmly said, clutching his own body.

 

Alfred's brain went blank for a moment.

 

“Hahaha.”

He started laughing lightly and rubbing the back of his neck. He had no idea what he was doing, really.

_I-I don’t regret proposing that we kissed!_

What was Arthur saying? Did he know what he was saying?

“What is this all about?” he asked Arthur with an uncomfortable smile. "C’mon. I know you're not being serious."

Getting more agitated at each second, Arthur jumped off the table and grasped Alfred's shoulders.

“Look, Alfred, I screwed up, okay?! I know! I know I didn’t ask properly!” he exclaimed exasperatedly, completely taken by his own emotions, “I wasn’t really thinking! We were both alone under the moonlight and...  shit ....” his eyes dropped momentarily, but they rose fast with renewed vigor, “I just, I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing you, alright? You have no idea of how much I wanted to. It was really confusing. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to say… I just knew I wanted to kiss you!”

…

The only thing Alfred managed to say in response was:

“Uh…”

He was so, so confused. He had no idea what was going on.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Arthur asked in an almost desperate tone, leaning over him and getting so, so close that their foreheads almost touched. His quick breathing was directly hitting Alfred's skin. "Do you get what I mean?"

"You mean that ..." Alfred tried to articulate something coherent between a bunch of "hm"s and "eh"s sounds that he let out of his mouth. His mind was spinning as if his brain were inside a washing machine. "... you ... didn’t want to hurt my feelings? It was all an accident?" Alfred tried the most benign conclusion possible.

“ _No!_ ” Arthur retorted immediately, and then he grimaced a little, rethinking what he was saying. "I mean, yes, but that's not the point!” he shook his face furiously with his eyes closed.

He was looking so nervous that Alfred pitied him a bit. He would have patted him on the back to comfort him if he wasn’t scared of end up getting punched in the guts by doing this, for looking condescending.  

Maybe he should have done that, since Arthur still metaphorically punched him in the guts with the following revelation:

"How dense can you be? I'm telling you that I like you!” he shouted out, frowning while blushing like crazy “I'm attracted to you. I want you. I _long_ for you. Can I be any more obvious?!”

No, no. That was obvious enough. With that, there was no longer any ambiguity about what Arthur was saying. That was a confession, alright.

“Oh.”

“I know.” Arthur shrugged, averting his eyes and sitting again on the table. He was clearly trying to look cool. Typical Arthur Kirkland.

In the same way that after an explosion we can only hear a buzz, Alfred was almost numb to Arthur’s confession, except for a feeling of utter shock.

It wasn’t like he didn’t care about Arthur’s feelings. He really did. However, he was in such a state of complete astonishment that he was unable to feel anything but perplexity. He never imagined Arthur could feel this way about him. Much less admit it. That still didn’t even felt real. It still felt like a scene in a dream.

“So... “ Alfred risked making a question to understand what was happening and what did that all meant to them, “... What are you going to do about it?”

Arthur took a deep breath.

"I can’t do anything about it alone.” he replied nonchalant. "You are involved too. I can only do something based on your feelings about the matter.”

Eh?

What bullshit was that? Alfred wasn’t ready to make a decision like that! His biggest plans for that day were a slumber party and that already sounded pretty intense, but now he had to decide what to do with the first love confession he received in his life? Fuck that!

“Hey, you. Don’t throw me under the bus with you.” Alfred grunted.

“I don’t want to hear this from YOU when I'm obviously in the worst situation here!” Arthur rebutted, and perhaps that was just Alfred's impression but his eyes looked a bit wet.

Urgh, that guy. He was a total chaotic neutral. How could he just go and confess like that without even knowing what to do next? That was so like him.

The worst part was that Alfred could not leave it like that. He could not just turn his back on him and ignore everything he'd said. It was _Arthur_ , after all.

Sometimes he was a mess but Alfred was one too, so that was one that aspects that made them relate to each other.  

Goddamnit.

"So…  don’t you want to, you know, ask me to go out with you?" Alfred suggested, messing his hair anxiously.

Arthur looked at him with his mouth agape.

"... or something like that..." Alfred lowered his eyes.

There was an embarrassing moment of silence in which even without looking at him, Alfred felt Arthur's eyes burning his face.

“Wait a minute, does that mean that you fancy me too?” Arthur asked, pointing at Alfred and looking genuinely taken aback. That guy was as smooth as a bumpy brick road.

Alfred couldn’t simply say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a question like that. Not right away, at least.

"I ... I don’t know ..." Alfred answered truthfully. He decided that, for better or for worse, he would communicate exactly what he was feeling to Arthur. If they were honest with each other, maybe they could come to a conclusion together. "It's true that I appreciate you as a friend. It's also true that I can recognize in some moments that you're kinda hot. My glasses work, after all. B-But anyway! This is all going too fast for me,” Alfred touched his forehead with the tips of his fingertips. “I have no experience with these things. I legitimately don’t know if I could like you in this way or not…”

For a moment, Arthur looked defeated. He practically wilted before Alfred's eyes. However, something sparked inside him, making his eyes fill with determination again.

"Can we at least try?" he asked, holding Alfred's shoulders again. “Just go out with me for a month! Just one month!” he raised a single finger to reinforce his point. “After a month, if you are still unsure about this, we can go back to being friends!”

Arthur was as red as a beet while saying this. He probably was aware that his offer sounded like the prompt of a cheesy romantic comedy.

A month, huh?

That was not how Alfred imagined his first time out with an omega would be like, but frankly, he should have expected as much. His life was like a cheesy love comedy, at times, just without the ‘love’ part.

It wouldn’t be so bad to try something like this with Arthur. He was a good friend and he was very cute. The only problem was …

"... what if I realize that I don’t feel this way about you in less than a month?" Alfred questioned.

What if he realized from their very first date that it was too weird for him? Would he have to wait a month to get rid of a situation that was making him uncomfortable? And more importantly, would Arthur be offended if Alfred realized before the time that he really didn’t want to date Arthur?

"Then, you could reject me, of course,” Arthur said with a small sad smile, releasing Alfred, crossing his arms over his chest and looking away. "It would only be an experiment, after all. You have no obligation to me. We're both mature enough to separate things, right? We can remain friends, even if I get rejected.”

…

“Don’t try to look cool. I can totally smell that you’re almost crying,” Alfred pointed out.

“Shut up!!!” Arthur shouted, clenching his fists and sobbing just a bit.

Oh, that guy ... He was lucky to be so adorable.

“Hey, I didn’t even reject you yet,” Alfred sighed, finally having the courage to give him a pat on the back. “Cheer up, okay?” Alfred nervously gulped a bit as he said, “We can give it a shot.”

The way Arthur's face lit up with those words tugged at Alfred's heartstrings.

“Really?” Arthur's eyes were glittering with hope and they looked incredibly beautiful like this. That was too much for Alfred to handle.

"You're so embarrassing! Stop looking at me like that!” Alfred complained, flushed, messing up Arthur’s hair with both hands.

“Shut up! You are the embarrassing one!” Arthur rebutted, giving Alfred little punches on his chest.

And that was the beginning of their new relationship.

Kiku was very surprised when Alfred brought Arthur to his Halloween sleepover, saying "ah, dude, sorry for the surprise guest but we're going out now, so I couldn’t left him out, really."

* * *

It was so good to have Arthur back. With him around again, Alfred realized even more how much he had missed his best friend. It was great that things were back to normal!

Well, kinda normal, at least?

When their new relationship began, it really wasn’t that different from the time when they were just friends. They went back to spending their lunch breaks on the roof, with Arthur taking Alfred home after school. On days when they had no class, they would go to Alfred's house to play video games, watch movies and eat pizza, or go to Arthur's secret spot to listen to music and talk, while looking at the stars.

On the surface, nothing seemed to have changed. However, those experiences had a different meaning for Alfred now. He knew Arthur liked him. He knew they were technically going out. Therefore, even if they weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary, it felt different to be alone with Arthur now.

After knowing about Arthur's feelings, Alfred became much more aware of him. He noticed Arthur's long glances toward him and the way his eyes sometimes fell to his mouth. He could see the way Arthur blushed because of him. Not to mention all the subtle signs that Arthur's smell sometimes emanated. Fuck.

All that affected Alfred, of course. He could never be completely immune to a cute omega looking at him that way. Especially when that omega was his best friend. Sometimes he felt his own cheeks heat up and his heart speed up because of Arthur and a kind of strange, giddy feeling in his chest.

He knew full well that Arthur knew from his scent what was happening with him, just as he himself knew from Arthur's scent what was happening with him. Still, they never mentioned it. Alfred didn’t know what to say and although Arthur probably had a lot to say on the matter, he probably was afraid to say something wrong and make a mess out of the situation.

They simply let that silent tension linger, like a scorching summer day preparing a heavy rain.

Around the middle of November, Arthur gained a little more courage and went on to give Alfred some gifts. For the most part, these gifts were poorly prepared food that Alfred, unfortunately, felt unable to refuse. He couldn’t deny that the experience of eating something especially made for him was quite sweet even though the pastries themselves often were not.

In addition to the sweets, Arthur started bringing used books and CDs as gifts. He tried to be casual about it, saying he had brought these things just to show Alfred, but then saying something like, "You know what? If you liked it, take it. I have a lot of books/cds anyway." Alfred didn’t have the heart to say that he could hear all those CDs at Spotify and read all those books on his computer. He found it very cute that Arthur was giving him all those gifts, and he put them on a shelf he separated just for them in his bedroom.

Now, the most precious addition to Arthur’s behaviour was the fact he started to called Alfred by the affectionate nickname ‘Al’. He was always a bit embarrassed about it and his voice broke a little when he said that nickname and yet he kept saying it. Which was good because Alfred really liked it and thoroughly enjoyed hearing it in Arthur's voice.

Things were going well, but for some reason, over time, Alfred began to feel inexplicably restless near Arthur and he couldn’t understand why.

He started to feel almost like electricity was running under his skin in Arthur’s presence. He didn’t know where to put his hands, couldn’t stop fidgeting near him and got easily out of breath by his side.

He and Arthur were having fun. Everything was great. Yet, he felt a need for _something else_. What did he want?

It took a few days for Alfred to come to the realization that he wanted to touch Arthur. And he wanted it badly. To satisfy his cravings, he patted Arthur's back or hit their shoulders together playfully occasionally. He hoped that would be enough for his physical cravings.

It wasn’t. They got even worse over time, actually.

He wanted to take Arthur's hand as they walked down the street. He wanted to hug Arthur when he said something particularly cute… Sometimes he went to sleep thinking about it and ended up rolling all over the bed, hugging his pillow, feeling absolutely ashamed of himself.

He wondered what Arthur's vision of that whole situation was. Arthur was being a perfect gentleman. He was really attentive to Alfred and wasn’t pushing him for physical contact or anything of the sort. Alfred could appreciate that but still, damn...

If Alfred made the first move, that would imply a decision about them that Alfred didn’t want to make. Yet. Couldn’t Arthur make the first move? It would be so much simpler if he did.

 

* * *

 

With the beginning of winter, Alfred started coming to school with a bomber jacket. It was a brown jacket, rather soft and ridiculously large because, well, Alfred was ridiculously big.

Arthur had his own jacket and tried not to envy Alfred’s, even though, truth to be told, his stylish jacket wasn’t the best outfit against the cold of winter and deep, deep down he wished he could steal Alfred's jacket.

Still, he had his pride. He wouldn’t ask for an alpha’s jacket and be all cuddly with it, like a typical omega with a boyfriend. No bloody way, mate. He would deal with that weather like a true champ.

Or so he thought. There was a particular day, when the two were on the school’s roof like usual and Arthur was simply unable to stand the cold. It was cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey. His fingertips looked like popsicles. He couldn’t stop shaking.

Fortunately, Alfred realized what was happening and intervened. Despite his generally dense behavior, he had come to notice Arthur a bit more after they started going out.

"Are you cold?" he asked, grinning from ear to ear and poking him on the cheek. "It’s kinda funny to see you like this, though I should have expected it. Omegas get cold more easily.”

"I-I don’t want to hear comments about the weather from someone who can’t even wear black in summer... " Arthur retorted with a glare.

Alfred laughed, shaking his face at his sides and starting to take off his jacket. Arthur stared at him a little as he made this move, wondering what the hell was going on. He rarely saw Alfred take off any piece of clothing in front of him so, even if Alfred was still entirely clothed, the gesture was a bit suggestive. He was ashamed to acknowledge that he got a bit flustered.

“Here you go,” Alfred held out his jacket in Arthur's direction. "It seems warmer than what you're wearing. You can use it.”

Oh.

"It's ... It's your jacket ..." Arthur commented, hesitant in accepting the offer.

“As far as I know, yeah. I didn’t steal it,” Alfred answered in a playful tone.

What was he doing exactly? Was that a test?

"If ... if I wear something like that ... I'll undoubtedly smell like you ..." Arthur explained, lowering his eyes, embarrassed. Did Alfred have any idea of the consequences of his actions? Perhaps he did not realize how suggestive it was to lend an outfit to an omega when it smelled so much like him.

"I don’t understand ..." Alfred said and for a moment Arthur's first thought was ‘I knew it. He was just acting without thinking about it first.’, “We're going out, right?” Alfred said in a hurt and rather impatient tone, giving Arthur a serious look that made his heart race. "What's the problem with you smelling like me?"

Oh…

Was Alfred taking that trial month seriously?

That was the first time he'd said such a thing to Arthur.

“W-We are going out!” Arthur nodded furiously, taking the jacket from his hands. "I'm courting you!" He confirmed with a determined look. He felt that he couldn’t allow anything in this world to rob him of the joy he was feeling at the moment.

"I should be the one courting you, technically, but whatever,” Alfred chuckled, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, see if the jacket helps.”

The jacket helped a lot, indeed. It was warm, soft and, the best part of it, it had the soft, comforting scent of the person Arthur loved. He felt absurdly happy to use it, even though it was so long in the arms that his hands barely came out of the holes.

Alfred seemed immensely pleased to see Arthur in it. He kept swinging his gigantic sleeves and looking rather happy at him.

At that moment, Arthur really felt that they could work together. That they could have a relationship.

“Hey, Al.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to have dinner at my house today?”

“Yeah, that would be cool.”

“Cool.”

That same night, Arthur brought Alfred to dinner and introduced him to his parents and siblings as ‘the guy I'm dating’.

 

* * *

 

Rumors run fast in high schools, like in any other boring environments in which people desperately need any kind of distraction.

In the last week of November, there was a lot of rumors around that Alfred and Arthur were dating. The rumors had probably been triggered by the fact that Arthur had permanently attached himself to Alfred's jacket, despite some attempts by Alfred to retrieve it. As a result, even though they didn’t even got to the first base, Arthur was clearly smelling like him and it spawned a bunch of suggestive ideas in a bunch of people’s minds.

Arthur wasn’t denying these rumors, so Alfred decided not to deny them as well. He had, after all, been introduced as ‘the guy I'm dating’ to Artie's family and, frankly, he was feeling kind of proud of it.

Their relationship was progressing, and the truth was that Alfred was happy about it. Things were slowly moving forward and he was gradually getting more confident of the answer he would give Arthur at the end of the month.

Not everyone was happy about their progress with Arthur, though. Arthur's admirers were clearly unhappy with the situation. Some of them tried to call Alfred to a more discreet place to talk to him after class, but Alfred was not a freaking idiot and he always ran off in the opposite direction when that happened.

Screw that alpha pride stuff. He didn’t want to be beaten up. Besides, he didn’t have to fight for Arthur's attention with anyone. Arthur had already made up his mind about the alpha he wanted. It was just a matter of respecting his decision.

Alfred did his best to avoid those alphas, but on the Friday of the last week of November, the day he would finally announce the result of their experimental relationship to Arthur, he ended up bumping into a bad scene on the roof.

The same alpha he had come across months ago, pressing Arthur against the wall, was on the roof again, doing the same thing again, while Arthur glared at him, silently indicating that he wanted him as far as possible. It was like a freaking deja vu.

The difference between that scene and what Alfred saw a few months ago, was that now Arthur really was his omega and Alfred could not just take a few steps back and pretend he was not seeing anything.

Oh, shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck. That guy was so much bigger than him. It was obvious that he could use Alfred as a basketball.

He felt a cold sweat running down his body and his palms were numb. He was afraid of what he was about to do ... he didn’t even believe he was about to do it …

“H-Hey! What are you doing?” he confronted the other alpha.

The other alpha immediately turned his face toward him, with a smirk.

“Oh, hello. Nothing you would dare to interrupt, scarecrow. I can smell your fear from here, you coward.”

His confident, intimidating posture made Alfred's knees shake a little bit.

“Artie isn’t comfortable with what you're doing,” Alfred persisted, taking a deep breath and trying to stay strong. "Do you think you can invade other people's personal space just because you have the bigger muscles? We are not caveman, dude!”

"You're really annoying,” said the other alpha, practically growling at Alfred. He was still pressing Arthur against the wall. Meanwhile, Arthur was watching all this confrontation with wide eyes turned towards Alfred, saying nothing. "Who do you think you are to interfere with my conversation with this omega?"

"I ...", Oh, shit. Okay, he was fucked. Alfred would be fucking destroyed. The only way to avoid being obliterated by that guy would be to turn his back on Arthur and he would never, ever do that. “I’M HIS BOYFRIEND!” he shouted with every inch of courage left in his body.

After hearing it, the alpha ran off, apologizing, with tears in his eyes … Yeah, right. That's what happened in some alternate universe where Alfred had more luck and muscles.

What really happened was:

"Ah, so the rumors were true,” the alpha smiled entertained. “Kirkland was avoiding answering me. Thank you for letting me know, scarecrow,” the alpha finally let go of Arthur and turned to Alfred, slowing advancing in his direction and cracking his knuckles, as if preparing to use his fists. "How bold of you. Who do you think you are to try getting an omega that a stronger alpha wants? What did I said I would do to you if you started dating, huh? I hope you're ready for a fight because that’s what you’re going to ge…”

The alpha couldn’t finish his sentence. Before he was able to, he was thrown in the fucking _ground_ by a hard, quick punch in his left cheek. And standing beside him, caressing his fist that seemed a little red after the blow, was none other than Alfred's badass omega boyfriend.

“Who's the bold one, huh?” he complained, stepping on the alpha's head, not hard enough to hurt him further, but enough to keep his face down, “I'm tired of alphas acting as if they could decide on my love life,”  Arthur said in an utterly annoyed voice, "I was diplomatic enough to be able to hear you say your bullshit without reacting, but then you _had_ to threaten the alpha I like. How stupid can you be? What part of this aren’t you able to understand?” Arthur took off his foot from the alpha's head and sat above his stomach, gripping his collar and casting him the coldest and most intimidating look possible. "Alfred is the alpha _I_ have chosen. If you want to dispute this decision, you will have to fight with ME, not him. And I don’t think you're ready for the social repercussions of getting beaten up by an omega, you huge baby.”

Alfred watched this entire monologue, almost frozen in place, and when Arthur realized it, he immediately changed his attitude, abruptly releasing the alpha's collar, letting him fall to the ground, and then running toward Alfred with pleading eyes.

“Alfred, listen! P-Please don’t think ill about me, I just… !”

“I’m in love with you,” Alfred blurted out immediately. He couldn’t avoid saying that, really, after the coolest scene he ever saw in his entire life.

Arthur looked so freaking cool at that moment. Alfred really wanted to kiss the hell out of him.

Hearing that, Arthur first got confused, then slightly embarrassed and finally he just laughed.

“What? Did you get turned on after seeing me winning a fight with an alpha?” he asked, amused, “Are you an omega or something?”

“I could make the last question for you as well,” Alfred teased, receiving a little slap on the shoulder for this.

"Were you serious?" Arthur asked with a look of wonder and amazement that looked absolutely amazing on him. "Are we dating, Al?"

“Gosh, I hope we are. Otherwise, the fact that I just confessed to you would be really awkward,” Alfred shrugged and smiled.

“Al, I …”

In a matter of three seconds, Arthur's expression changed from ‘oh, I love you so much, this is the happiest moment of my life’ to ‘oh, fuck’.

“Bloody hell,” he looked at his jacket and started to pat a small spot on the chest area. “Now there's some blood in my jacket,” he complained sulkily.

“My jacket, you mean.”

“Shut up. It’s mine now and you know it,” Arthur frowned and hugged the jacket against his own body protectively, as if physically trying to avoid that Alfred stolen it back. “I will take this as a courting gift.”

“A courting theft, you mean.” Alfred corrected.

Arthur just smiled and kept snuggling the jacket with all he had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, guys!!!
> 
> I hoped you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it! My thanks to my lovely friend littlemaple once again for her help with the translation!
> 
> As you probably noticed, I decided to give this story another chapter so I could finish things up at a better a pace. Sorry for the problem! I hope you will enjoy the conclusion next time!^^ 
> 
> The support I'm getting in this story is truly the most amazing one I got in this fandom and I have no words to describe how grateful I am for every review, every kudo and every reader that I got for this. I truly hope I can keep receiving your support since there's no greater gift for a writer.
> 
> My special thanks to rydia89, Pruspace, Yanderebrit, AnonymousVow, littlemsterious, helldork, CamelliaSinensis, Imperial_Princess, KuroNekoSuna, EmmyLynna and Pickosita5 for leaving kudos and all the guests who did the same!
> 
> Also, my special thanks to all the people who left reviews! I already answered those!
> 
> If you liked this chapter, please let me know your favorite parts and your feelings about it! I will be answering all the reviews I get so don't hesitate to send me your questions and thoughts!^_^
> 
> Byeee


	6. Boyfriends(part. 02)

The tender moment between them was interrupted when the alpha that Arthur had just beated the hell up began to scream that he couldn’t breathe or move, that Arthur had broken his ribs and that he would sue him.

Welp. Taking care of that seemed slightly more important than what they were doing before.

Alfred and Arthur then took him to the infirmary, having to explain what had happened, despite their fear of the consequences.

Luckily, the alpha suffered no serious damage. His cheek was swollen, one of his tooth had been chipped and he had bitten his lip, but his shortness of breath and inability to move was just anxiety. The nurse wanted to inform the principal of this incident and, surprisingly, it was the alpha who pleaded for her not to do so. He didn’t want the entire school to know he got beaten up by an omega.

Arthur was totally right. That guy really was a big baby.

Fortunately, even without people knowing about what happened, after that incident Arthur and Alfred didn’t have to go through anything like that again. Now officially a couple, they started to be together more often and this made the other alphas gradually lose interest in Arthur. The problem with wannabe-love-rivals-for-Alfred seemed to be over.

Their peaceful days were short-lived, for in the first week of December, Arthur's pre-heat began.

This period was never fun for Arthur. He had no appetite, got easily distracted, and constantly had a low fever. All of this had always been a nuisance in the past, but that year he received an extra nuisance, much more difficult to handle than the previous ones… To put it short, he was needy. Ridiculously needy. He wanted to touch Alfred so badly.

He and Alfred had recently begun to have a little more physical contact. They were holding hands and hugging when they were alone. However, truth to be told, Arthur needed more than that at the moment. Too bad that beggars can’t be choosers. He could not have much, so he would make the most of what he had now.

Whenever he had the opportunity to, he would sit between Alfred's legs, hugging him with all he had and inhaling deeply, with his nose pressed against Alfred’s neck. Alfred's scent had been particularly good in recent days. Arthur felt his body grow weak and warm just by noticing it.

"Your heat is super-close, right?" Alfred asked in one of those moments. Urgh, he didn’t have the slightest finesse. Lucky for him he still was cute and smart and sweet and smelled so good...

“No shit,” Arthur replied, rubbing his nose a little against Alfred's neck.

"It’s kinda funny to see you like this..." Alfred commented, patting the top of his head. "I feel a bit privileged, you know? As if this side of you were a DLC that only I have access to."

Arthur had been so weak against Alfred in the last few days that even such a nerdy line, that usually would be a rewarded with a “neeerd” response,  went straight at his heart, making him hug his boyfriend tighter.

What a hopeless case he was.

In his previous heats, Arthur never missed an alpha at his side. Feeling aroused didn’t mean feeling the need for a partner. At least, not for Arthur. If he had his toys, he would be fine.

It was a whole new experience for him to crave so much for a sexual partner and he had no idea how to deal with it. He did not know whether he should express it or not, at what pace things should be going, or whether he was ready for what his body was yearning for. It was a shock when he first looked at Alfred and thought ‘I want him inside me’. Initially he did his best to process this rationally and convince himself that this was just a random thought that would soon vanish. Yet, the more his hormones stirred inside him, the more blurred became his prior motives for slowing things down. He stopped caring about his former motives for going slow. All he knew was that he wanted Alfred and he wanted him soon.

If that decision depended only on Arthur’s will, they would definitely spend that heat together. Still, he couldn’t demand something like that from his boyfriend. They hadn’t even had their first kiss. The first kiss that, by the way, would be Alfred's first kiss _ever._ How to even consider sex?

He would have to deal with his pent up lust on his own.

"What are you going to do when your heat comes?" Alfred asked. Arthur hated to see that from his scent, Alfred was asking that question very innocently.

"What do you think I'm going to do?" he asked back, with a twinge of sarcasm.

"No... I mean..." Alfred blushed a little, rubbing the back of his neck and averting his eyes. "Are you going to miss classes?"

Did Alfred have any idea of what happened in a heat?

"Al, my dear. Obviously, I'm going to miss classes,” Arthur answered deadpan.

Alfred, hearing this, made a slightly sad face, murmuring almost to himself:

“So I'm going to spend almost a week without seeing you..."

Arthur's heart skipped a beat when he heard this. That's what Alfred wanted to know... Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck. That boy. He was too damn precious. Fuck.

"M-My parents put the phone in my room during my heats for emergencies, so if you want... I can call you," he informed Alfred while partially covering his face with one hand to disguise his embarrassment.

He really, really hoped Alfred would agree to that. Just because he wouldn’t spend his heat with Alfred that didn’t mean they needed to completely break the contact in that period. Actually, listening to Alfred's voice would probably be a comfort in those days.

"Ah. Yeah, sure." Alfred smiled. "I would appreciate it."

Arthur groaned, burying his face against Alfred’s chest, lamenting that his boyfriend was so cute and hard to resist.

 

 

* * *

 

  
Arthur's heat started on Monday of the following week. On the same day, it started to snow a lot. That was somewhat unlucky on his part, considering that one of Arthur's few joys during his heats was to know that he would be missing class to have some fun with himself while the rest of his classmates were studying. On that Monday, though, because of the snow, his school wouldn’t be having classes so everybody would be resting while Arthur was busy with a frustrating heat.  Complete bollocks.

Arthur’s heat, this time, was different from his previous ones and, definitely, his worse. Heats used to be fun. Arthur simply felt the need for physical stimulation and sated it. It was stimulating, exciting and easy enough.

Now, however, he felt a kind of emptiness different from the feeling he usually felt. He felt empty not only physically, but emotionally.  He wanted hugs, he wanted Alfred's presence, he wanted Alfred's scent near him.

Inhaling his jacket brought some comfort, but it was also torture. To smell his scent made Arthur's instincts even more raw and it almost hurt to not have Alfred by his side.

Nothing was enough to satisfy him. He had a constant need that could not be quenched. It was absolutely frustrating.

Worse of all, of course, were the times when he called Alfred. Not only because Alfred's voice was terribly charming and tortured Arthur in the same way as his scent, but also because Alfred seemed utterly unaware of the fact that he was talking to his boyfriend IN HEAT.

While Arthur admitted to him shameful things like ‘I need you’ and ‘I wish I could touch you’, Alfred reacted with laughter and sentences like ‘Awww, don’t worry! You will be better soon! Hey, just out of curiosity, what's your favorite food?’. Totally unaffected! It was as if Arthur had no sex appeal whatsoever!

Alfred's reaction to his calls made Arthur wonder… Wasn’t it a little strange that they had made so little advance in physical contact during all this time? Holding hands and hugging… Those were things that even friends could do. Why had Alfred not tried to go one step further? Did he at least feel attracted to Arthur in that way?

It was possible he was only being clueless, Arthur thought. Maybe he really had no idea of what happened in a heat or maybe he thought those disinterested responses were what Arthur wanted from him. If that was the case, well, he was completely wrong, but at least, it was an easy mistake to correct. If Arthur took the initiative, they could go in the right direction and that’s exactly what he planned to do.

Was Arthur being hasty? A little, maybe, but to hell with it. He was needy and a mess. He needed Alfred.

On the third day of his heat, Arthur asked Alfred to come over. He heard Alfred gasp in response and before he even could say something, Arthur quickly added that his parents were home to keep them at a proper distance and that all he wanted was a kiss from him. That didn’t seem like a lot to ask for.

Nonetheless, Alfred refused it.

"Haha. No, Artie. That sounds like a totally crazy idea. We can see each other when you get back, right?"

With that, Arthur hung up the phone immediately and didn’t contact Alfred for the rest of his heat.

 

* * *

  
  
When Arthur returned to school on the next week, he looked pretty grumpy. He had lost weight and looked slightly dehydrated, so at first, Alfred attributed his boyfriend's bad mood to the fact that heats seemed pretty tough. However, he soon figured out that Arthur was particularly upset with him, instead of just being in a general bad mood.

Arthur wasn’t ignoring him, but he made it clear that he was sulking. He kept glaring at Alfred with a frown all the time and shaking his head disapprovingly at him, like, what the fuck, man.

What had Alfred done wrong? The only thing out of the ordinary he had done in the last days was refusing to visit Arthur in his heat. That was nothing to complain about! In Alfred’s point of view, no matter how he analyzed the situation, he couldn’t have acted more rightfully. It had to be something else.

A few days went by. At this time, Arthur remained inexplicably sulky and Alfred continued to try to comfort him with jokes and casual conversations about things they both liked. Then, on the last day of school before the winter break, Arthur finally opened up about what was bothering him.

They were sitting on the roof, their usual place, side by side, with their backs against the wall. On that afternoon, there was a dense mist around the town and the sky looked completely grey. It was really cold but Arthur was using Alfred’s jacket and a scarf to warm himself up. Although Arthur was upset, he was not upset enough to give Alfred his jacket back.  
  
“Alfred…”

Alfred knew immediately that they would have a conversation about it when Arthur called him Alfred instead of 'Al'.

"Yes?" Alfred asked with a forced, uncomfortable smile.

'How could you do that thing that you don’t know about?', 'Did you notice I’m angry at you?' Or 'Fuck you' were the things Alfred expected to hear next. He absolutely didn’t expect to hear:

"Do you really... really see me as a boyfriend?"

What kind of question was that?

Did he see Arthur as a boyfriend? Duuuh! They were boyfriends! How else would he see Arthur?

"No. You're a complete stranger. What's your name again? "Alfred joked, rolling his eyes and smirking.

Arthur didn’t take it quite well. The lines on his face tightened and his eyes filled with ice.   
  
“I’m being serious.”   
  
Crap, he was.

"... Obviously, I see you as a boyfriend," Alfred answered slowly with a frown, confused by the fact that Arthur was even making this question.

“You surely took your sweet time to answer this,” Arthur pointed out with a scowl and then started hugging his own knees.

"I was hesitant about what to say because I have no idea where you're going with that question." Alfred answered honestly.

Arthur wasn’t just angry at him. He was also sad -- Alfred could smell that on him. Maybe he was feeling a whole lot of other things as well, and Alfred was just not able to notice it. As Artie had said, smells were stupid. If there was anything going on with Artie, Alfred wanted to hear about it from his mouth.

"I just wonder if you'd prefer that we were just friends," Arthur said very quietly, hiding his face between his knees.

That sounded almost like a rejection.

Suddenly, Alfred’s chest feel so tight that it was almost as if his heart could be crushed.

"No, I… I wouldn’t. W-Would you?” he asked anxiously.

"Of course not!" Arthur shouted, turning back to Alfred with wide, scandalized eyes. He looked almost offended by what Alfred said, even though he was the one who said something weird that gave that idea.

"Then why on earth are you asking something like this?!" Alfred snapped. He understood that Arthur was acting this way because he was sad and angry, but damn! Alfred was also getting sad and angry with that situation. He really thought he was being rejected… 

“If that so, then why did you laugh at me when I asked you to kiss me?" Arthur asked back. He was very quiet again but his eyes looked more armed than ever.  
  
Oh.   
  
Oh, uh. So it was that. Well ... The truth was probably more anticlimactic than Arthur was waiting for. It’s just that Alfred laughed when he got nervous and especially if he was caught off guard.

In fact, this was one of those situations.

“Artie, you see…” he began to laugh and rub the back of his neck. This, of course, made Arthur's anger tick.

"See? You're laughing again! What's so funny about kissing me?! "Arthur asked in a louder, indignant voice, banging on his own chest. “Is it because I asked for it or is it just that ridiculous to imagine yourself kissing me?!"

No, what the fuckl! What the hell was Arthur saying?!

"Artie, this is nonsense!" Alfred rebutted firmly, "You shouldn’t make a bunch of assumptions like this just because you heard me laugh!”

"It’s not just because you laughed! You don’t seem to be physically attracted to me, Alfred Franklin Jones!” he pointed a finger accusingly at Alfred's disbelieving face. "We've been going out for two months and dating for almost a month and you've never even tried to kiss me! Excuse me for daring to assume that you don’t feel attracted to me when you barely touch me and managed to laugh at me when I told you that I wanted us to kiss!"

Uh. Well, Alfred had his reasons for this ...

"Look, Artie..." he tried to explain himself, but Arthur kept releasing the things he had accumulated in his chest.

"I confessed to you first and I am constantly trying to seduce you! When you are always the person making the first move, it’s normal for you to feel that the other person is not interested! Do you think I --?! "

Arthur was starting to get into a tornado of hasty conclusions and if Alfred did not pull him out of it fast, there was no way of knowing where Artie would stop.

"Arthur, YOU WERE IN HEAT!" Alfred had to yell that blunt ass line to make Arthur shut up and listen. Alfred wasn’t usually the yelling type and much less the yelling about a personal subject type so Arthur got properly shocked at this. Alfred, of course, took advantage of Arthur’s confused and dumbfounded silence to explain hurriedly "Do you get it now? I didn’t want our first kiss to happen just because your hormones were making you horny! I just wanted to make sure that we kissed for the right reasons, at the right time!"

Arthur, for the first time in that conversation, seemed to legitimately absorb Alfred's words. He lowered his accusatory finger, his shoulders raised tensed and stared at Alfred in complete silence for a moment, before sighing and staring at the floor.

"If that was the reason... " he began in a voice considerably more restrained and soft, but still with traces of suspicion "Why didn’t you kiss me before my heat?"

It was a relief to see that Arthur was no longer in the offensive. That question sounded as a legitimate doubt, not just as an accusatory rhetorical question.

It seemed that what Alfred would say to him wouldn’t simply bounce off the wall this time around. Arthur was listening. Though still upset and suspicious, he was at least willing to believe in Alfred.

That’s why, Alfred knew, he had to be serious and honest with his boyfriend, without hesitations. Even if his explanation sounded lame or could possibly be used as blackmail material in the future, he had to take a risk and be completely open with Artie.

"As soon as we started dating, you went into your pre-heat," Alfred explained and gulped. He ended up averting his eyes from Arthur while he talked. It was a bit suffocating to look at him directly when he was saying things that were coming straight from his heart. "I ... I didn’t want our first kiss to be such an impulsive thing, okay? A quick first kiss on your front door with your parents checking on us... " Alfred shook his head, disapprovingly. "That didn’t seem romantic. Not to mention I didn’t want you to have expectations that I couldn’t fulfil. If I had kissed you, you might have hoped I would agree to go to your room and maybe knot on you and ... "Alfred took a deep breath "... I'm not ready for sex," he admitted, chewing a bit on his own lip.

It had been harder to admit that aloud than he'd thought it would be. Deep down, he was a bit afraid and even ashamed to confess to Arthur that he wasn’t the confident and intensely sexual alpha that society expected him to be. It was hard to admit he was scared about doing that sort of thing with Artie.

"I... I know..." Arthur murmured softly in response and, through his voice, he not only knew, but truly understood.

The fact that he understood so easily and so naturally, without judging him at all, made Alfred comfortable enough to add:

"I'm not ready yet, but I want it one day," he declared assuredly. "I'm 1000% confident that I'm attracted to you."

Soon after Arthur heard that, his shoulders began to move strangely, almost as if he were having minor spasms. Alfred worried about him and put his hands on his face to see if he was okay. It was then that he realized that Arthur's skin was damp and that rivers of thick, incessant tears were streaming down his face.

“You git!” he hissed at Alfred, slightly shoving his shoulder “I can’t fucking guess your thoughts! You should have told me these things clearly instead of just laughing at me and acting like I was a fool for trying something! Do you have any idea of how insecure I felt?!”

Seeing Arthur cry made Alfred feel bad about what he had done. He didn't feel guilty about refusing to kiss Arthur during heat. That had never been the real matter, after all.

He felt bad because he had just understood that what had happened between them had been a failure of communication. One that had been both of their faults.

Arthur had thought that Alfred didn’t care for him and never gave Alfred any chances to prove otherwise. On the other hand, Alfred never went after his opportunity to defend himself as well. He could have just asked Arthur what he was feeling and why. And he never did it.

Alfred had been lazily waiting for Arthur to take the initiative in solving the situation. Arthur always took initiatives in their relationship and Alfred got used to rely on that.

He didn’t even take into account that this shouldn’t be a relationship managed by Arthur. Single-handed managing a relationship seemed like a terrible job for a person, now that he thought about it. They were dating. Alfred was a part of it, as much as Arthur was. Just as he had expectations about Arthur, Arthur should have his expectations on him and that was something that Alfred took too long to realize.

He could understand now why Arthur must have been hurt. In the same way he couldn’t guess Arthur's motives to be upset, Arthur couldn’t guess his motives to keep silent about that, when clearly something was wrong. They both fucked up but there was a point from Arthur that was completely valid. He was the one who took all the initiatives in their relationship. And it was unfair of Alfred to always expect this from him. Making the first move could be scary. What if Arthur was unable to do it in some circumstances? Would Alfred just let things come apart?

No way. No freaking way.

Alfred cared about that relationship and cared about Arthur. He had to have more courage and prove it to him.

"I'm sorry.” he told Arthur in a earnest manner, looking deep into his eyes with sincere regret “Sorry for not considering your feelings and sorry for not explaining myself better. Sorry for not asking what was going on... Don’t have any doubts that I love you. I'm sorry if I made you think that I don’t. "

With that, Arthur's eyes were completely filled with tears and anger at the same time. For a moment, Alfred thought ‘oh crap, that was not what he wanted to hear, I fucked up again’. He figured that wasn’t the case when, shortly thereafter, Arthur pulled him into a hug, leaning his face on his shoulder and crying some more, while he cursed Alfred, calling him a plonker and a pillock and a bunch of other british expressions, and apologized as well for not communicating too.

Alfred patted him on the back, not remotely offended by the things he was saying. First, because he couldn’t understand half of them and second, because Artie rarely cursed him when he was truly angry so that was a good sign.

After a while, Arthur calmed down. He jerked away from Alfred and sat back on his side and laid his head on his shoulder, with a serious expression that clearly said, ‘I'm mortified at what I just did, so don’t tease me about it right now’.

Alfred could respect that, at the very least. 

“We’re cool?” he asked just to make sure. Arthur nodded and Alfred smiled in returned. “Nice.”

They were quiet for some time after that. This time the silence served to ease the tension between them instead of intensifying. It was a silence of rest and readjustment, in which they let the heat of their emotions subside and become something warmer and more comfortable.

While they were like this, Alfred took the opportunity to admire for a moment his incredible boyfriend, whom he felt he had almost lost for the most stupid reason in the world.

Damn, he was cool. Even with puffy eyes and wearing a jacket that looked so huge on him, he still looked like such a badass. The fact that Arthur was simultaneously handsome and cute was something that Alfred was very aware of. He couldn’t understand how Artie did that but it always amazed him.

From the way Arthur was rummaging in his own pockets, he clearly wanted a cigarette. He did not find any. Arthur had greatly diminished the habit after they became friends and had practically stopped after they began dating. Of course, from his face, Alfred could tell that Arthur was not happy about the absence of cigarettes in his pockets, but Alfred was quite pleased to see how much Arthur had done for him.

'Oh,' Alfred thought, looking at Arthur's grumpy face. 'I really love this person.'

Alfred's eyes lowered spontaneously to Arthur's mouth. All that talk about kissing had made his lips almost magnetic to Alfred's eyes and thoughts… Looking at his thin, peachy lips, Alfred started to wonder how it would be like to replace Arthur's cigarettes with his own lips.

Alfred really wanted to kiss him. He had for awhile. But…

"I just ... I had a plan, you know? It  was supposed to be a surprise, "Alfred mentioned casually, fumbling through his hair and staring absently at the gray sky above them. "I wanted our first kiss to be a special occasion. I would make your favorite food, maybe decorate your secret place, say some pick up line about stars... All that jazz.” Alfred smiled weakly and shook his head “I wanted to be pretty smooth and cool about it ... I guess I failed terribly... "

Arthur remained quiet as Alfred admitted this, looking forward and merely rubbing his head a little on Alfred's shoulder to show that he was listening. It was not until Alfred had finished speaking that he asked with a side glance,

“Did you really thought about all of it?”   
  
“Yups.”

"And now you gave up of this plan?" Arthur asked as if he were merely curious. Still, Alfred knew him enough to notice that there was something in his eyes that revealed that there was more expectation on this question than he was trying to convey. 

"I think so." Alfred said, putting his arms around Arthur's waist, alternating the direction of his eyes between Arthur's eyes and his mouth. "Because I want to kiss you right now."

The change in Arthur’s scent and color was instantaneous. Like a blooming flower, in seconds, he got all red and smelling like cinnamon. He also got pretty startled. He stammered out 'what?' about five times before he could utter a complete sentence.

"W-Wait ..." Arthur stammered, retreating a little and frowning. "Does that mean you don’t want to be romantic with me anymore?"

"I want to! It’s just that …! How can I say it? Looking at you now, I realized that this is a very romantic situation."

Arthur snorted and rolled his eyes, muttering something about this being the worst bluff ever.

Alfred insisted:

"Seriously! Think a little about it! It's about to snow, you're wearing my jacket and well ... "Alfred couldn’t help but smirk. He had a great trump card on his hands. "This is the place we met each other."

That caught Arthur by surprise. He gaped at first, before bursting into laughter.

“You’re so bloody cheesy. From what Christmas’ special did you took this line off?” he asked mockingly, while rubbing off his tears.  
  
“I don’t want to be called cheesy by someone who courted me as hard as you did.” Alfred pouted, taking his hands out of Arthur’s waist and crossing his arms over his chest “I have a entire stand of the gifts you gave me, you know.”   
  
“Oh! Shut up!” Arthur blurted flustered.

It was fun to play with Arthur, and under normal circumstances, Alfred would be happy to continue that game as far as he could. In the moment, though, he wasn’t up to it.  With Artie’s face inches from his, adorably blushing ... There were a lot of things Alfred was thinking of doing with Arthur and exchanging taunts with him seemed like something for another time.

"You still have not answered me," Alfred pointed out, putting his hands on the pockets of his jacket.

“About what?” Arthur blinked.

"Can I kiss you?" Alfred directly asked him. He want to leave no doubts that he wanted to do that. That he _would_ do it if Arthur gave him permission.

Arthur, in response, ran his hands through the back of Alfred's neck, pulling it so that their foreheads were resting on each other and he gave Alfred a look that simultaneously demanded and begged for something.

“Yes, you may.” he sighed against Alfred’s mouth.

Alfred felt chills going up his spine and bristling the hairs on his neck.

"Are you sure?" Alfred checked to save time as he thought about what he should do. He had never kissed anyone. He barely knew how to start. 

“Do I look uncertain to you?” Arthur glared at him, from like two centimeters of his face, running his fingers through his hair. Yep, Arthur didn’t look even remotely uncertain. Not even one bit.

With his heart leaping almost out of his chest and hands sunken in his pockets, Alfred leaned down, gently pressing their  lips together.

And ... well ... It was very fast and he barely felt something. It was almost as if a butterfly had landed on Alfred's mouth.

And yet, that was enough for a warm sensation to accumulate inside him and to make him extremely curious.

'More,' was what immediately occurred to Alfred's thoughts as he stepped away from Arthur. He wanted to taste more. He wanted to try it again. With that brief kiss as a starting point, Alfred felt as if something had been ignited inside him.

"Can I kiss you again?" he asked as soon as he opened his eyes again.

Arthur, still with his arms around his neck and with his green eyes open, glittering in a way Alfred had never seen before, nodded effusively.

“Yes, yes.” he smiled.

Arthur had probably received dozens of better kisses than that, but he was still smiling as if he had won an early Christmas present and, honestly, Alfred understood that feeling. He felt pretty giddy himself, despite the kiss itself not being that huge of a thing.

It wasn’t about the physical sensation itself. It was about sharing an important experience with someone he trusted. It was about the first attempt of several similar experiments that would happen.

He wanted to kiss Arthur, had kissed Arthur, and now he could kiss Arthur more.

That's what he did. Taking his hands from his pockets and placing them on Arthur's waist, Alfred pulled him close and pressed their lips together again. This time, for a little longer. The feel of the pressure was something new. Not exactly nice, but not bad either. He was feeling that they were going in the right direction, though that wasn’t right yet.

"Can I ...?" he began to ask when their mouths parted again and Arthur interrupted him, guessing what he was going to say.

"You can kiss me as many times as you want, Al," he said quickly, tugging at Alfred's shirt.

Wow, really? He could just kiss the handsome guy he liked as much as he wanted? Dating was awesome!

"As many times as I want to?" he arched a brow and then grinned and whistled. "That's a pretty dangerous line to say, Arthur Kirkland."

"I know. I live dangerously, "Arthur replied, shrugging with a proud smile.

“Yeah, those jeans will totally cut your circulation one day.” Alfred joked, giving a quick look to Arthur’s ripped and completely tight jeans, showing up the skin in his perfectly curved thighs.   
  
“You stare an awful lot at my legs when I’m wearing them, so it’s well worth the risk.” Arthur pointed out bluntly and the current direction of Alfred’s eyes made him unable to rebut that.   
  
“Yeah. I mean, fuck.” Alfred let out a long, drawn breath, appreciatively.   
  
“Later.” Arthur smirked “When you are ready.”   
  
“Goddamnit. You and your freaking dirty jokes, Artie.”

It was Arthur who pulled him into a kiss this time.

The difference was noticeable for Alfred. His movements were much firmer and more certain than his. Artie knew where he wanted to put his hands and what he wanted to do with his mouth. It was a bit comforting not having the pressure of being the lead, but when Arthur began pressing the tip of his tongue against his lips, Alfred became agitated once more. He had no idea of how to react. He left his mouth completely closed and held Arthur as stiff as a manequim.

His nervousness made Artie undo the kiss, asking if it had been too much for him. Alfred firmly denied it was the case and asked him to try again.

They tried again. Alfred didn’t open his mouth enough for Arthur's tongue to fully enter it.

(Can we try again?).

Even with Arthur's tongue in his mouth, Alfred didn’t know what to do with his own tongue.

(Again?).

Alfred used up some courage and brushed the tip of Arthur's tongue with his own.

(Please, again).

At that point, things were starting to get a little exciting. Alfred was beginning to feel a bit of anticipation when Arthur's tongue touched  his.

(Again).

Because they could.

(Again).

Because they wanted to.

Because they were best friends AND boyfriends. Because that was a new side they were getting to know in each other.

Because it was good to do that. Because it was unlike anything they had experienced before.

Because they wanted to stay close. Because they wanted to make the other react. Because they wanted to get to know every part of each other.

They kissed again and again and although it was freezing and snowflakes had begun to fall on them at that time, they still felt perfectly warmed up the way they were.

PS: They would, however, both blame each other for getting a cold, later on that day.

* * *

 

 

_A/N: Hello, everyone!!! Thank you very much for reading this story!!! I received a lot of support from you all and I can't thank you enough for it!_

_I would like to inform you that I'm writing a new fic in this omegaverse series called "[Golden Days](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14729997/chapters/34048590)". It has beta Arthur, alpha Alfred and a historic setting with old hollywood actors!  _

_Also, I will be commissioning artists to make fanarts of scenes of this series. It's my way of getting motivated to write fanfics and also to motivate the artists of this fandom! If you're a artist that enjoys my stories and take commissions, please let me know!  We have a lovely start of this project with this drawing of the amazing KC based in a scene of chapter three in which Alfred and Arthur have a conversation by the (contaminated) river._

**_At that point, all he was thinking about was that he had to act normally. Dear god, he had to act normally. The night was already falling. The sky was in a beautiful lilac tone, the cicadas had begun to sing. They would soon return to normal positions and Arthur would be able to act normally and just forget about this whole deal… If he endured it just a bit more, he would be able to pretend nothing ever happened._ **

**_“Alfred, have you ever kissed someone?”_ **

* * *

By the way, as a final note here are Arthur and Alfred's profiles made with some questions that you guys made! If you have any other questions about their futures or their current personal life, leave them in your review and I will answer them!

 

= Alfred Franklin Jones = 

Age (in the story): 16 in Chapter 01 and 17 from Chapter 03.

Zodiac sign: Cancer

Sexual/Romantic Orientation: For now, he doesn’t really identify with anything specific but one day he will realize he is super-pan. 

Favorite Drink: Lemonade

Favorite meal: Pizza

What he will be when he grow up: Astronomy researcher.

How many comics he has: 89. He would have more, but his room is already full of things.

What he would take to a desert island: A red flare so he could be rescued as quickly as possible.

 

 

= Arthur Kirkland =

Age (in the story): 18 years old.

Zodiac sign: Aquarius

Sexual/Romantic Orientation: Demisexual. Demiromantic. Too demi to really determine if he has a preference for any type or genre. He only knows he loves and feels sexually attracted to Alfred and this works fine since they became life partners.

Favorite Drink: Tea

Favorite meal: Cake

What he will be when he grow up: Freelancer composer.

Would he rather never have heats or have heats once a month?: Never have heats. Heats once a month would be hell for him.

What animal would  hebe: Thorny dragon. Looks intimidating but only grows up to 20cm (8 inches) and eats ants. It fucking shoots blood at you from its eyes if you seem threatening, though.

How many piercings he has: Four in each ear, one in the eyebrow.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where you can find more of lovely KC's works: 
> 
> http://kcg-filomeno.tumblr.com/
> 
> Please, please, let her know how awesome you thought her drawing was because I'm still at awe. 
> 
> Also, here's a drawing that Ixie made based on this fic:
> 
> http://mayumisatosan.tumblr.com/post/174188943127/ixiethepixiedraws-i-was-thinking-of 
> 
> And here is a drawing that TapiocadePresunto made based on this fic:
> 
> http://mayumisatosan.tumblr.com/post/167749658927/mayumisatosan-ive-been-reading-metal-and
> 
> I'm so, so lucky for having the support of so many wonderful people! Thank you a lot!!!>.<

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so, so much for reading this story! I really hope you enjoyed it and will keep reading it!^^ There's still a lot to see about the characters personalities and history. Also, this will have a bit of slow burn to you guys! 
> 
> If you liked this fic, please, please, leave a review on it, telling me your favorite parts and stuff like this! I will be answering all the reviews so feel free to make questions and stuff like that as well! 
> 
> Take care and have a lovely day, guys ~


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